Situated on the site of the former Butler Farm in East View, NY, the Union Carbide Technical Center was a large diversified, campus-style research and office complex. At its peak in the mid-1980’s, there were about two thousand employees, approximately half of whom were engaged in laboratory-related research and development.  The Center was established in 1959 when Carbide-sponsored researchers at The Mellon Institute were relocated to Tarrytown.   The first building was a Technical Service Laboratory (later called the Chemicals Building).  In the period, 1961 – 1969, construction was completed of the Union Carbide Research Institute (Corporate Research Laboratory), Home and Automotive Products Laboratory, Silicones R&D Laboratory, Spine Building and Linde Laboratory. <br/><br/>These buildings and the Center’s infrastructure and supportive technical managers provided an environment conducive to productive research by committed visionary scientists.  Research activities in the different laboratories included work on cryogenics, superconductivity, metallurgy, welding, gas separations, molecular sieve synthesis and catalysis, silanes and silicones, vinyl resins, phosphorimetry, carbon clusters and flash vacuum pyrolysis.  My presentation will highlight the research and scientific contributions of Edith Flanigen (Molecular Sieves), Lawrence Litz (Advanced Gas Reactors), Bernard Kanner (Silane Coupling Agents and Silicone Surfactants for Polyurethane Foams) and my collaboration with Donald McLeod in the discovery of methylchlorosilylene (CH<sub>3</sub>SiCl) as the key intermediate in the Rochow-Müller Direct Synthesis of Methylchlorosilanes.

R&D at Union Carbide Tarrytown Technical Center 1959 - 1990

253rd National Meeting (2017)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.