A CLOSE CALL

How ICI nearly lost its polythene lead

Anthony Willbourn

The sixty-third general discussion arranged by the Faraday Society in Cambridge on 26-28 September 1935, on 'The phenomena of polymerisation and condensation' was the very first major conference on polymer science to be held in the UK. The world's most eminent polymer scientists of the day were there - Hermann Staudinger, Kurt Meyer, Roelof Houwink, F Eirich, Herman Mark and others. From the United States came Wallace Carothers of Du Pont who gave a masterly paper entitled 'Polymers and polyfunctionality' in which he referred to some work done by a young colleague, Paul Flory, which dealt with the calculation of molecular weight distribution.

Britain was represented by its big names: Professors Rideal, Donnan and Lennard-Jones, and the up-and-coming young men of the day like Cecil Bawn, RGW Norrish, Geoffrey Gee, NJ Megson, CF Goodeve and Harry Melville. And among the scientists from industry was Erie Fawcett from the Winnington laboratories of ICI.

Looking through the preprints, Fawcett noticed that Staudinger, in his paper 'The formation of high polymers of unsaturated substances', to be presented the following day, described ethylene as a 'stable compound' which polymerises 'with difficulty' and only to give low-molecular weight mixtures of liquid hydrocarbons. Now Fawcett had obtained permission to make known at the conference that a solid polymer of ethylene had been made in ICI in 1933, and he thought it only courteous to tell Staudinger about this work before the latter presented his paper. So Fawcett called on him at the University Arms Hotel the previous evening. However, when he reported that he had in ICI made a solid polymer of ethylene, Staudinger did not believe him and would not discuss the matter!

It is ironic to see in the published proceedings of the conference a contribution from Professor Mark. (then in Vienna) to the discussion on Staudinger's paper in which he explains why ethylene does not polymerise to give a stable polymer. And on the very next page Erie Fawcett reports 'some preliminary results on the polymerisation of ethylene under high pressures: ... when ethylene is heated to 170 ºC under a pressure of about 1000 atmospheres a slow polymerisation occurs leading to the production of a white solid polymer ... insoluble in acetone ... with a molecular weight by boiling point elevation of about 4000'. In responding to the discussion, Staudinger did not directly refer to Farwcett's contribution but made the general comment that 'it is very difficult to decide whether an unsaturated substance polymerises with or without a catalyst, because traces of impurities, e.g. peroxides, can accelerate the polymerisation catalytically'. This was actually quite a relevant comment because, in his work, Fawcett said that polymerisation of the ethylene was in fact initiated by traces of oxygen.

Staudinger devoted the rest of his remarks to a lengthy demolition exercise refuting Professor Meyer's persistent argument that high polymers do not have a longchain structure but are micellular aggregates of quite small molecules. This battle raged for years and undoubtedly gave polymer science a bad name among the traditional 'backwoodsmen' who dominated the academic ranks of organic chemistry.
Although Tony Willbourn was not at that conference, he talked to Eric Fawcett about it when they met in 1982183, when he learnt about the rather abortive meeting with Staudinger It was perhaps just as well that Staudinger and others at the conference did not take Fawcett's disclosure seriously because other workers in ICI were able to investigate and control the high-pressure ethylene polymerisation process in the second half of the 1930s. ICI thus obtained a dominating patent position and a world lead in low-density polyethylene technology which lasted for many years.