Preface

Virtually all the work in the Science and Engineering Section, and in the Economics and Industry Section has been done with the support and collaboration of other people.  Their effort is acknowledged below and in more detail as joint authors of the published and private work listed in the sections themselves.

This has come about because after about two and a half years after joining ICI’s Bozedown Laboratory from Cambridge as a Technical Officer in 1964, when Graham Neilson became my Laboratory Assistant, I became responsible for a section of 6-9 other Technical Officers (graduates and PhD’s) each of whom had a project with supporting technical staff.  After a further three years, I was appointed head of the Process Technology Group of about 25 Technical Officers and 30 supporting staff, together with direct access to a substantial workshop and the Company’s KDF9 digital computer at Wilton on Teesside (North Yorkshire).  I reformed the Group into five project teams with about five Technical Officers each, covering the following fields: Gas-solid catalytic reactors (Dr M L Brisk, later Professor of Process Control & Dean of Engineering, RMIT); Free Radical computation kinetics (Dr P Dyer); Gas-liquid reactors (Dr C Ramshaw, later Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of Newcastle); Two-phase & polymer reaction flows (M J Shires, later Senior Engineer with Foster–Wheeler); Gas-phase reactors (self).  The scope and scale of the five teams made the Process Technology Group (PTG) the largest chemical technology research group in Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), which in the 1960s was the largest chemical company by turnover in the world, and still in the first five two decades later.

Each of these teams was aimed at reactor design and process improvement on the full-scale through the basic philosophy of PTG: separate out the scale-dependent from the scale–invariant factors.

Scale-dependent factors included fluid flow, mixing and heat transfer; scale-invariant factors included chemical kinetic constants, thermal and mass diffusion constants, droplet formation kinetics.  The scale-dependent factors themselves included scale invariants such as viscosity and thermal conductivities.  Separating these factors, measuring them on the lab scale, then combining them into mathematical models, which could then reliably be applied to the factory scale, was the major achievement of PTG, to which all members contributed.

The theory of doing this with a greatly extended range of process is the basis of the Science of Process Manufacture (qv) and the lecture course given by the writer for 10 years in UMIST to the end of 2005.  These can be found in “University Lecture Courses” as part of the UMIST Polymer & Mechanical Engineering (1979-99) section.

C A J Young

Christopher (“A J”) Young, an Oxford Physicist by training, was recruited by Sir Ewart Smith FRS, then ICI Engineering Director, from the Sudan Meteorological Service in 1946 and was asked to set up a small Instruments Section at the Frythe Laboratories in Hertfordshire.  In 1956, the Control and Instruments Section as it had become was moved to Bozedown House, Oxfordshire, under “A J” as Group Manager, reporting directly to the ICI Main Board Director.  There were 3 Section Managers: Ivor Gray, Douglas Whiting and Ray (R L) Day.

A letter to the City Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 25th June 2007.

As someone also with a long asociation with ICI, I do not agree with Dr John Thornton (June 18th) that the demise of ICI is inevitable for the reasons he gives, though on current indications I agree that it is likely.

The fact is that ICI, like Pilkington a year or two back, is being threatened with takeover because it is a success.  Most takeovers, with some exceptions, destroy value because predators bid up the share price to levels which fund managers, who rarely have any long-term interest in the company, will acept.  Two or three years after a successful bid, the predator companies almost invariably find they have overpaid and attempt to recoup their expenditure by sacking staff, closing factories, and transferring the brands they acquired to other facilities.  Both sets of management, the predator and the taken-over, come out with millions paid for by those job losses and the value destroyed.

With the volume of money around, every single British company can be acquired by foreign interests.  At the present rate of takeovers, pension funds will soon have no British FTSE companies to invest in.  Is that what they want?  ICI is a test case.  The company is paying a decent dividend, now has a strong balance sheet, providing a good basis to grow and enhance its long-term value to the benefit of the pension funds invested in it.  Why don’t they give it a chance to do just that?

A letter to the Business & City Editor of the Times which was published on 7th October 1998.

As a director of an SME [small or medium-size enterprise] – a technology transfer and consultancy company “spun out” of university research – I see the Treasury’s euro message which Rachel Bridge reported (September 23rd) as hype.

Over the years my company has invoiced clients in different parts of the world in sterling and they have found no difficulty in remitting payments in that currency.  Pari passu, if I purchase a service in the US I expect to be invoiced in dollars.

What is so different about the euro?  For those companies already invoicing their euroland customers in marks, francs, etc. life after next January 1st will automatically be easier since they will need to take notice of only one rate of exchange instead of 11.  Companies know that.  If they invoice in pounds, why should euroland customers not continue to remit payment in pounds?

If British companies such as ICI and Rover try to insist that their suppliers in the UK invoice them in euros rather than in pounds, the legal tender of our country, they may well be breaking the law.  In any case such companies will stand accused of abusing their buying power to impose an exchange risk on British suppliers which their euroland suppliers will not be subject to, a gratuitous, unpatriotic act that will be scorned and resented.  They will also get short shrift if they try to impose euro-accounting on US suppliers.

One would think that the management of both these and other large companies with Europhile chairmen would be better employed in concentrating on improving their companies’ performance, rather than doing the present Government’s work for it.

Paper based on a speech given to the North of England Plastic Processors’ Consortium on 31st October 1997, to explain the importance of engineering and manufacture to the economy.

S F Bush

To read the text please click on The Engineer as Decision Maker which will take you to the paper on the Britain Watch website.

A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 10th June 1996.

In his attempt to prove the impossible, namely that Britain benefits from membership of the European Union, the CBI deputy President, Sir Bryan Nicholson (Saturday), calls in aid the canard that “surveys of business opinion have consistently shown overwhelming majorities in favour”.

Actually the Federation of Small Businesses which has over 90,000 members, many more than the CBI, has voted to leave the EU.  The CBI’s poll on the currency issue, on which it bases its views about business opinion, obtained only 212 responses, less than 3% of its membership.  Of this number only 28%, i.e. 59 responses, favoured abolishing our currency.

However much its chairmen may approve of “Europe” in their off-duty lunches at the CBI, British business is investing globally.  In 1995 ICI, for instance, authorized capital expenditure of over £550 Million in Asia Pacific, three times its commitment to Continental Europe.  Membership of the EU entails costs which are certain and massive while the gains, if any, are marginal and uncertain.  No rational individual or properly managed business would arrange their affairs on such a basis.

In fact the advantages of EU membership are as illusory as the King’s new suit in the Hans Andersen fairy tale.  But for the British people, leaving the EU will bring real gains including: an end to payments to the EU of around £8 billion gross, £3.5 billion net (equivalent to 2 pence on income tax); recovery of control of 60-70% of North Sea fishing grounds; an end to agricultural quotas which reserve portions of the British market for Continental producers; recovery of our right to negotiate world-wide trading agreements; removal of the power of the EU to impose a world-wide ban on British products, or to order the British Government to pay huge sums to pregnant service women, and to remove constraints on suspected IRA terrorists, in the name of the “Single Market”.

The “Single Market” so often invoked by Europhiles as a means of assuring common standards is simply a cloak for federalist ambitions.  As a market there is nothing special about it.  The international standards system (ISO) written in English is the preferred standard for the world outside the EU with its own quaint CEN system written in French.  Japan sells its products into the EU without paying the EU £3.5 billion for the privilege. Lucas won its recent contract to supply Volkswagen with diesel injectors because it had the best product in the world, not because it was in the EU.

And that’s the real point: it’s Britain’s ability to produce world-class products which will determine its future and secure the employment of its people.  Membership of the EU simply gets in the way.

Unpublished paper.

S F Bush with E P B Jongen.

Summary

The paper describes the analysis and computation carried out to model a manufacturing and marketing complex spread over several countries. Without loss of generality the model has been specifically applied to a polymeric materials business encompassing chemical and prepolymer precursors.

The model has been designed to have a variable structure so that changes to the nature and shape of the complex can be read in as data in the same way that parameters such as costs and efficiencies usually are. Because of this facility, the model provides a ready tool not only for optimisation, but also for assessing the strategic effects of possible future conversion technologies and for setting technological targets in the light of likely movements in resources and labour costs, costs of capital, changes in exchange rates and end-use demand.

The model has been designed to support both the planning and budgeting functions. While advantageous in itself, this dual objective was also necessitated by the practical circumstances in which the model was constructed, namely the large quantitities of data which have to be assembled and reconciled if the results from the model are to carry conviction. Accordingly the model output can provide reports on material flows, grade costs, and annual budgets for all or any part of the complex.

An example of the results obtained from optimisation of the full complex (with product details suppressed) is given and compared with the results from the standard sub-optimisation procedures in force. A number of the problems inherent in such procedures – transfer and coproduct pricing, overhead and capital allocation – are highlighted to show where conventional procedures can lead significantly away from global optimisation.

See also the section on Mathematics & Computation.

Systems Technology Report, ICI Europa

S F Bush with D Pauwels.

Summary

The MDI Flowpack I model exists in 2 versions – one relevant to the M2 plant at Rozenburg, the other relevant to the loop reactor modification of the M1 plant at Burnhall. These models are operational at Rozenburg and Runcorn.

Flowpack II equivalents of both versions have been constructed. The loop reactor M1 version works well, but problems still remain with the Flowpack II version of the standard M2 plant. These problems centre on the representation of multiphase R1 and its associated temperature control. Temperature control cannot be represented in the same way as in Flowpack I, owing to the absence at the time of writing of a specific temperature actuated flow control subroutine in Flowpack II. Results for all cases tried are summarised in this report, together with recommendations for use and improvement.

Systems Technology Technical Note, ICI Europa.

S F Bush with I M King.

Summary

Following on earlier versions, the treatment of dispersion and mixing in the reactors has been considerably elaborated. In particular finite rates of turbulent and molecular diffusion are allowed for. In this interim account, predictions of the urea formation from this model applied to the conditions of the Blackley Laboratory rig are compared with the experimental results which were reported after the model predictions. A simplified treatment of the effect of agitation and injection on the side reactions (notably to urea) is appended.

Paper, Systems Technology Group, ICI Europa

S F Bush

Summary

Systems Technology is of growing importance to industry because of the increasing emphasis on performance. The performance of a business, works or process, is rarely the sum of its parts separately determined. The need has therefore arisen to manage the complexity arising from the large number of factors which determine the whole. Meeting this need is the function of Systems Technology.

Section 1 of the paper outlines basic concepts which have been shown in real life to meet this criterion. Sections 2 and 3 illustrate their current and potential value by describing briefly some of the resulting methods developed, and applications made, over a number of years to unit operations, particularly chemical reactors, processes, polymer processing, factory control, and business planning. Examples are taken from the chemicals, fibres and plastics fields.

While not universally appropriate, a contribution common to most of the projects and fields tackled has been to perceive a common structure to two or more disparate problems and thus to decompose optimally otherwise very intractable problems. This opens up what seems to be a fruitful and systematic mode of technology transfer which is only at the beginning of its development. Examples are highlighted in sections 2 and 3.

A common need in many projects is to determine the boundary of the system considered and the appropriate level of theoretical and experimental or observational detail within it. A systematic procedure has been evolved for this, which while in many cases can be regarded as only common sense, has a clear relevance both to the conduct of a particular research project and to judging its likely cost and benefit.

Systems Technology Group paper, ICI Europa

S F Bush, revised 1st June 1978 and again on 31st January 1979.

Summary

The paper describes ideas of a mathematical nature which have been developed and applied to the fundamental design of process systems, the emphasis being on those in which there is combined flow and chemical or physical state changes. The development has been designed specifically for digital computation and allows the structure of any particular model, especially its geometry and the basic processes of physical or chemical change to be as accessible to alteration as individual parameter values commonly are. The structure is designed to simulate real systems directly rather than their differential equations and in this way avoids or mitigates some important problems of a numerical-mathematical character. Examples are given. The structure is designed also to facilitate the elucidation of experimental data, particularly its scale-dependency. The overall development is exemplified by the experimental and computational analysis of chemical kinetics problems treated in Bush and Dyer (1976).