Summer Of 63
In 1963 when I was 20 years old and going to college, I got a summer job at Philtex Plant in Phillips, Texas. The plant was only a block from my house so this was an ideal summer job for me. Philtex Plant had started out being a research facility for developing speciality chemical processes. The test plants they built were so profitable that they had commercialized the facility and they sold all kinds of speciality chemicals. There were six college students hired that summer. Here are some of our experiences.
Summer Of 63
The Cooling Tower
Billy and I were cleaning the screens on one of the cooling towers and we were trying to pull one of them out. Billy got up on the edge of the cooling tower to get some leverage and started pulling. He lost his balance and went head first into into the five foot deep cooling tower basin. Since they were treating the cooling tower water with heavy metal chromates for corrosion control. Old Billy got to go to the showers and left me there to finish the job. I always wondered if he did that on purpose.
Hydrogen Sulfide Plant
They had an H2S ( Hydrogen Sulfide) plant that produced 99% pure product. H2S is deadly poison if you breath it. They had the plant down to repair for something and we were walking down the road adjacent to the facility while they were starting back up. We heard gas start blowing and the operator yelled …”Run, get out of the area.” We took off running and that operator held his breath and ran into the area and closed the vent valve they had accidentally left open. It took him a full 3 minutes. He then went to medical to be checked and then hit the showers. He was extremely lucky he survived the ordeal.
Sand Blasting
At the site, there were a lot of chemical storage tanks roughly 10 feet diameter by 60 feet long. To keep the stored chemicals pure, the tanks had to be steamed out and internally sandblasted occasionally. One man would stay out side and watch the air compressor and sand blast machine. The other would put on a breathing apparatus and climb into the tank and sand blast the inside of the tank. On one occasion, the fan belt slipped off of the air compressor, so I got a screw driver and slipped it back on. That was a mistake. The union rep jumped all over me and told me I had cheated someone out of an hours upgrade to mechanic. I did a job in 5 minutes that would have taken two hours if we rounded up someone else to do. Next time we just sat around and got paid while we waited on a mechanic. After we sand blasted the inside of the tank, we had to sweep all the sand out, and wipe down the inside of the tank with some special inert chemical. They sealed it up and purged the air out with nitrogen then we started on another one.
Drum Cleaning
They recycled drums so we cleaned them with soap and water, then steamed them out for an hour. They had some special drums that were lined with tops that opened that came back after the users emptied them. The chemical in them cost $10 a pound, so we were given kitchen spatulas and we scraped every drop of that expensive stuff out and recycled it before washing and steaming the drums. We all got pretty good a rolling drums around that summer.
Unloading Drums
New drums came in by railroad car. They were strapped in with metal banding before they left the vendor. We were fixing to unload a boxcar of drums, and I pulled the boxcar door open and the metal strapping had broken on the trip. The drums came tumbling out of the box car and one of the top edges of a drum hit me on the bone of the elbow on the way to the ground. It was very painful so I squirmed for five or ten minutes until it subsided some. i got an X-Ray and no bones were broken so I was back at work in an hour.
Mercaptan Sulfur Compounds
The plant made various mercaptan sulfur compounds for commercial sales. These are the stinkiest compounds around. One day they had a spill which we had to clean up and I managed to get some on my boots. I had to take them off and leave them outside the house the rest of the summer.
They had a large variety of work available at Philtex Plant that summer and the knowledge I gained about chemicals was beneficial to me in my Career with Phillips Petroleum.
Sand Blasting inside of a tank was a lot nastier that than this picture indicates. It was like a dust storm in there
Thanks for reading Philtex Plant,
Hawg Jaw Bill