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From acetylene is made Du Pont's neoprene (known in an earlier, smellier form as DuPrene). Acetylene gas is made into monovinylacetylene, which reacts with hydrochloric acid to form a liquid called chloroprene. Heat and pressure polymerize this substance into a tough, elastic product which looks much like crude natural rubber, but far surpasses it in resistance to age, heat, sunlight and gases. Thus neoprene is an excellent material for coating the 1,000,000 square yards of cotton in every U.S. barrage balloon. With remarkable foresight the U.S. Army last spring placed orders or laid plans with every large rubber processor in the country for production of hundreds of such balloons.
From petroleum alone is made Standard Oil of N.J.'s Butyl rubber. Its building-blocks are olefins (unsaturated hydrocarbons like ethylene) but polymerizing agents remain secret. It is a superior synthetic rubber except that it is not oil-resistant.
Substitutes for rubber, rather than rubberlike elastomers, are Goodrich's Koroseal, Union Carbide & Chemical's Vinyon, etc. Most of these are synthetic resins, i.e., plastics flexible enough for use in hose, fuel-tank seals, etc. Thiokol, made by Dow Chemical Co., is used as a barrage-balloon coating by the Vulcan Proofing Co. of Brooklyn, N.Y.
Today all these synthetics and substitutes cost from two to four times as much as natural rubber (1941 price: 22½¢ per lb.), chiefly because of small volume. But of imminent significance is the fact that they are all cheaper than natural rubber was in 1923, when it hit $1.23 per lb. To produce synthetically the 600,000 tons of rubber consumed yearly in the U.S. would require new plants costing from $100,000,000 to $200,000,000—the cost of one or two battleships.
But final perfection of synthetic rubber, thoughtful rubbermen admit, will demand a further outlay of at least $30,000,000 for scientific research alone. And because this research would probably make present techniques obsolete, they are—unless Japan's blockade becomes morbidly effective—in no hurry to make a premature, war-inspired effort to capture natural rubber's markets.