CONSTRUCTION: Fresh Air Plan

When Corn Products Refining Co. set out to build a new plant at Corpus Christi, Texas two years ago, it wanted to find some new solutions to the old problems which have always plagued the grain-processing industry—explosive dust and dangerous fumes. It gave the job to Cleveland’s H. K. Ferguson Co., builder of the thermal diffusion unit* of the Oak Ridge atom bomb plant. Ferguson engineers decided that the best way to eliminate dangerous working conditions within enclosed spaces was to build a plant without walls.

Thus, most of the 21 buildings in Corn Products’ $20 million sorghum processing plant, which was getting into full production last week, have no walls; some have no roofs either. Typical are the millhouse and the “steep house,” in which grain is placed in large wooden tanks for treatment in a dilute sulphuric acid solution. The sea breeze keeps the steep house clear of choking sulphur fumes. The breeze also sweeps clean the floor under the silo conveyor belt, usually a collection spot for explosive dust.

Overhanging concrete canopies protect workmen from the hot Texas sun and occasional rainstorms, while low railings keep them from walking off a floor. Because of better design and more mechanization, the plant operates with only 250 production employees compared to almost 500 in an old-fashioned refining plant with the same capacity.

* One of three plants originally built to make uranium 235 at Oak Ridge by three different methods.