About 1979, Dow built a semi-plant mag purification plant as the final step before going to full size commercial. The responsible big dog manager decided a pilot plant wasn't needed for whatever reason. So…. It was $10MM capital down the tubes when the process didn't pan out as projected.
I was doing some work adjacent to the huge clarifiers in Plant B that (about 500ft diameter IIRC) used to remove precipitated contaminant inorganics from the seawater. One of the clarifiers had sheared a pin from torque overload on the plow arms and the clarifier was drained to remove packed in solids. They dropped a small bulldozer in the clarifier to push solids to the sidewall and a scoop would reach down to grab a bucket full for loading into dump trucks. IIRC correctly, the raw seawater intake for Plant A and Plant B mag production was something like 200-250K gpm. Lotta water….
Sounds about right.
I was actually at Mag III only one year, 1978. After that, I summered at Chlorine III
At the mag cell, I was working as a contractor for S&M. Our job: Re-roofing the mag cell building. Talk about a SHITTY job! We had many people that would start in the morning and quit by lunch. I couldn't quit, because my girlfriend's Dad got me the job. He'd call me a P*ssy if I quit.
There were several steps to the job we were doing:
1) Strip the old, heavily tarred roof off (Loads of fun! Often involved using a chipping gun to cut a 2' square of tar and then use a shovel to pry it up)
2) Cut a 4' strips of the groove-fit roofing boards to gain access to support beams (Underneath the MgCl2 conveyor that was somehow electrified. It shocked you if you touched it)
3) Hook up chain falls to remove and replace the giant support beams... I guess they were 12"x 24" and 30' long?
4) Use hand tools to remove the tar from the tongue and grooves on the 4's roofing boards, then replace them. (After 8 hours of this, my face would be burned by the creosol vapors)
5) Re-apply THREE layers of roofing paper, around all the structural beams that supported the electrifed conveyor and the fence near the edge of the roof... (which, was ~ 100' in the air)
6) Mop hot tar over the entire roof
There were ~ 30 people in the crew. After a month, I'd been there longer than ANYONE except the foreman and the JLG driver that brought tar to the roof. Though I was just a 19 year old college kid making $5.50 per hour, I was directly supervising most ALL of the work. I was the only one who had been through the entire process.
After they hired a couple more college kids, at $6.50 an hour, I got pissed and demanded a raise. They sent me to company office, where I spoke with "Mr. S", from S&M.
He told me: "Son, we have a rule that NO ONE can get a raise in the first 90 days after hire.. so, I can't give you one. But, I promise you this: If you stick it out all summer, I'll hire you anytime you want to work, Christmas, Spring Break, or summer. And I'll give you a raise every time you come back!
Well... I finished. And, I came back, 3 weeks at Christmas and every summer. And, Mr. Sorrel was true to his word. The last summer I worked, in 1981, I only worked for 7 weeks, but it was a special job, tearing down the ORIGINAL styrene monomer plants from the 1940's. I worked 12-16 hour days for 7 weeks, at $14.75/hour. I made 7 grand in 7 weeks and thought I was RICH!
Ironically, I worked most of my career in the styrene industry. 32 of my 40 years. I'm pretty sure I have personally been in MORE styrene monomer plants around the world than any human being on the planet. And, I helped tear down the VERY first one. Always thought that was weird.