RESEARCH: Chemicals from Coal

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April 28), is not worried by the fact that not even his own chemical engineers know what new products may come from hydrogenation. They had the same problem when they produced chemicals from petroleum gases which had no known use, but which now sell in quantities totaling more than 2 billion Ibs. a year, and go into everything from an antifreeze (ethylene glycol) to cigarettes, aspirin, and synthetic Vitamin Blt More than a third of Carbide's earnings ($104 million in 1951) comes from products and processes that did not even exist in 1939. Among them: the process for making butadiene from alcohol which provided 90% of all U.S. World War II synthetic rubber; synthetic gems which outshine the original; polyethylene plastics whose uses range from radar insulation to flexible bottles. "Research," says Morse Dial, whose company has spent upwards of $100 million on it in five years and will spend $30 million more this year, "is our lifeblood."