22 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[October i, 1907. 



WORK OF THE PARA RECOVERY CO. 



THE fact that the Para Recovery Co. have booked orders for 

 something like 1,000 tons of their Mexican Yucatan rub- 

 ber and that the New York Commercial Co. have taken over the 

 selling agency of the product, makes the proposition one that is 

 of definite interest to the trade. The company have a factory 

 situated at Bayonne, New Jersey, and are operating under secret 

 processes invented by Mr. George E. Heyl-Dia. The fact that 

 the processes are secret, of course, places an embargo upon 

 visitors. The Indw Rubber World, however, is able to give the 

 trade a look into the washing, mixing, and drying rooms, 

 through views which the company were good enough to furnish. 

 From these photographs one learns that there are something 

 like 7 to 10 paper engines in use for washing, 8 large mix- 



Par.\ REC0\'ERy Co.'s Pl.\nt — Front View. 



ing mills, and 9 vacuum driers of the largest size. In addition 

 to this, more machinery has been ordered, practically duplicating 

 the present plant. 



When Mr. Heyl-Dia showed the writer that he could take a 

 hard slab of material looking like a piece of board and convert it 

 into an elastic mass before his own eyes, there appeared to be 

 in sight a new field of development in the chemical treatment of 

 non-rubber or part-rubber gums. While the products turned out 

 by Heyl-Dia earlier contained as a basis balata, which he con- 

 verted only partly into rubber, it remained a secret how this 

 was done, and the opinion prevailed that Mr. Heyl-Dia's claim 

 to have produced rubber synthetically was not correct. The 

 process used is of course a secret, but Mr. Heyl-Dia has patent 

 applications partly granted, so that he is now in a position to 

 make public and lay claim to the scientific part of the process 



referred to. by which non-rubber hydrocarbons are changed into 



rubber. 



It is well known that the terpenes, of which there are many, 

 have chemically the same formula [Co Hie] or the same mole- 

 cules of carbon and hydrogen as rubber. They are, however, 

 differently bonded by nature, so that their physical appearance 

 and qualities differ. Heyl-Dia found that Venetian turpentine 

 and balata, combined under certain conditions, formed a new 

 compound, identical with rubber, chemically and physically. This 

 fact is as novel as it is interesting generally, as it proves that 

 a rearrangement of molecules of two or more entirely different 

 substances physically produces a new chemical compound. This 

 rearrangement, however, affects the components of balata only in 



P.\R.\ Reco\ij{y Co.'s Mixing Room. 



part, and the problem remained to force the balance of non- 

 rubber hydrocarbons to yield to treatment. 



A long series of experiments, not yet completed, on account 

 of the newness and vastness of the field, have been carried on, 

 and Mr. Heyl-Dia and his assistants have occupied their time 

 in looking into the composition of certain low grade rubbers, 

 the commercial value of which is lower than of balata. His 

 attention was drawn to the guav-ule product, which he investi- 

 gated for the Madero interests in Mexico, and he found that 

 guayule contained a considerable quantity of terpenes, which, 



Para Recovery Co.'s Washing Room. 



Para Recovery Co.'s Drying Room. 



