Visiting chemical plants

If you’ve never been to a chemical plant, your first time can seem like a trip to another planet. I remember the very first time that I visited one as a graduate student. It was a pretty well-heeled facility, with a two-storey room built around what must have been an 8000 or 12,000 litre reactor. We walked into the room, and looked through the sight glass at the top of the reactor to see the agitator. It was a brief glimpse, and the odd crow’s-foot shape of the retreat curve agitator against the white reactor background didn’t look anything like the familiar blue stir bar in a glass 100mL round bottom flask.

It wasn’t until my third job in the chemical industry that I was privileged enough to get to know a plant that I could call ‘my own’. Being able to get up from my desk or walk out from my laboratory and go and see the reactor that would belch forth mysterious and unexpected samples that an operator would bring me – or better yet, product – was an incredible education. Going out to the plant during day and night allowed me to understand its strange rhythms, sweet smells of solvent and its otherworldly noises to the point where I could practically navigate it blindfolded.