Reflecting on my initial years in Israel, these recollections are penned nearly three decades after the events unfolded. Each narrative, in some manner, ties back to my tenure at the Dead Sea Bromine Group, commonly referred to as Brom, where I served as a process engineer for a decade prior to my move to America. Given the work-related context of these stories, I found it necessary to weave in a certain level of detail, offering at least a foundational understanding of the chemistry, technology, and mathematical modeling involved. While I intended to lay out these experiences in a way accessible to a broad audience, I beg the reader's forgiveness if I've fallen short, echoing the sentiment: "The pianist plays only as well as he is able." Additionally, while I've altered or modified some key figures' names, those present during these times might still recognize the individuals behind these aliases.
D.V. 2024
Contents
BROMINE CHEMISTRY
In May 1991, I immigrated to Israel from the Soviet Union. I knew only the Hebrew letters and was immediately assigned to a basic ulpan course. At first, everything went very well: I liked the language, the young teacher Anat praised my pronunciation, and each day of classes brought definite progress. About a month later, when my vocabulary reached the level of “Ellochka the Cannibal” from the famous novel “The 12 Chairs” - she knew and used just 30 words, on a pleasantly cool evening in Beer-Sheva, my college friend Misha B. came to my rented apartment, and the school learning had to be postponed for better times. Misha had moved to Israel almost immediately after receiving his diploma, thirteen years before me, and had long since achieved the status of “vatick,” meaning a repatriate with experience or someone well-versed in the local situation. His help to me and many other “olim hadashim” - new immigrants fortunate enough to be in his orbit - is hard to overestimate; he translated documents, filled out various forms, explained what was good and evil, and, of course, helped finding jobs.
- Brom is searching for a process engineer - we urgently need to send your resume, - Misha began without unnecessary preamble. - Let’s see what you have. At that time, I had minimal experience describing my merits; in Russia, I had changed jobs only once, and Misha was clearly unimpressed with my CV version.
- Could have written it in English, but okay, it’s still better to submit it in Hebrew. He quickly began translating, seemingly correcting the format and eliminating the unnecessary and naïve details about marital status, children, and hobbies.
- Misha, actually, I haven’t worked as a chemist for the last four years; I managed a computer center at the Institute of Epidemiology in Moscow. Maybe I should look for a job as a programmer?
- Dim, you don’t understand what you’re talking about: thousands of programmers have arrived from Russia, and they pay them peanuts, but a chemical engineer, and a candidate of science at that, is a perspective in every way. Beer-Sheva is a city of chemists, and everything here is somehow connected to the processing of the Dead Sea products. I work at the Dead Sea Works, and Brom, where I’m recommending you, is our subsidiary company specializing in the extraction and processing of bromine. I can’t get you into Dead Sea Works now; just last week, we hired three professors from Leningrad.
My feeble resistance was broken, and a permanent end was put to programming. After dinner, refusing vodka in a non-Russian manner, Misha grabbed my translated resume.
- I’ll print it and send it tomorrow. - And he left.
Three days later, I received a telegram delivered by a special courier, inviting me for an interview at Bromine company. I hardly remember how the interview went, but later, many years later, one of my bosses (Miron) told me that everyone was impressed by the depth of my knowledge, and another (Damir) expressed the sentiment that they were trying to figure out if I knew anything at all. The Middle East is a delicate matter - they will never tell the truth, and it’s not always appropriate. Perhaps a well-crafted resume played its part.
In one way or another, I was hired, and when I came to Ulpan the next time and told my new friends - fellow immigrants - that starting from July 1st, I would be working as an engineer and wouldn’t be picking peaches for five shekels an hour the following Saturday, it made a strong impression. After all, the first person from the group had found a job, and he didn’t even know Hebrew yet. [content]
PSYCHOTEST
As it turned out, those who hired me had doubts, or maybe it was a standard procedure, but, firstly, they took me on a probationary period for six months, and secondly, with the condition that I would successfully pass the psychotest. So, a week later, I and Yasha, another scientist from Leningrad who had just joined the company, went to Tel Aviv to a company specializing in such testing.
All of this took a whole day with a lunch break with one of the employees of this center, who probably continued to observe us in an informal setting. We were offered to decide the language for testing, and from Hebrew, English, Spanish, and Russian, we chose the great and mighty Russian. The professional test took only an hour and a half and represented a standard IQ test with checking the knowledge of addition and multiplication, finding patterns in a series of letters or numbers, discarding unnecessary geometric figures, and so on - not difficult, and I managed within the allotted time.
Then there was an impressive poll of 513 questions, mostly repeating in different ways: “I often have stomach pain (yes/no)” or “I am sure that my stomach rarely hurts,” aimed at checking the consistency of answers. I was asked at least ten times if I was a communist, but there were also tricky questions like, “Would you like to be the secretary of the party regional committee?”. I answered “No,” although I doubted whether they would consider me a fool - being the secretary of the regional committee in the USSR was not so bad, at least financially.
The test with circles brought me into a particular depression, clearly designed to test my (poor) memory. Each of us was given 30 seconds to look at a sheet with ten circles of different diameters arranged chaotically, and then we had to close our eyes and put a cross in each circle with a pencil. A point was awarded for each hit, and three attempts were given. Out of 30 possible points, I scored only five - clearly failed, and I was sure Brom would show me the door; the only consolation was that Yasha got just three hits.
After lunch, we wrote two essays: “My Mentor,” which nowadays would be called an influencer, and “My Last Job,” where I naively criticized my Moscow bosses, stating that in Western society, including Israel, it is an absolute taboo worse than incest.
A week passed, then another, and nobody informed us of the test results, but we were not fired - it worked out somehow. After some time, I decided to ask my manager, and he said there was nothing to worry about - the result was excellent; otherwise, I wouldn’t be working here. I think the reader won’t be surprised to learn that a few years later, another of my bosses, of which I had only two, couldn’t resist and confidentially told me that I didn’t pass the test, but he(!) defended me because he saw my potential.
Still, the test with circles haunted me, and one day, I told a friend psychologist about it as an example of demonstrating my mediocre visual memory. She laughed for a long time and then explained that it was a test of honesty: the test supervisor observes whether you peek when drawing your crosses, and memory has nothing to do with it. [content]
ASPEN
Fortunately, my first boss in Brom, Damir, turned out to be an enthusiast of computer modeling, a trend only gaining popularity then. Experienced engineers mostly did their calculations using a slide ruler. However, the tempting idea of replacing labor-intensive, expensive, and often dangerous natural experiments with the push of a button on a computer was gradually making its way, especially in physics and chemistry. One of the questions Damir was interested in during my interview was whether I could work with the American program ASPEN, developed by Aspentech Corporation, for modeling chemical and technological processes.
I honestly replied that although I had heard about it, I had never tried it and “never held it in my hands.” Still, I added that I could probably learn. After all, I didn’t try to play the violin either, but who knows…
While still a junior-year student at the Mendeleev Institute, I began scientific work under the guidance of Valera Z., a graduate student in the cybernetics department. I ended up with him, I think, by chance, or maybe my mother turned to the head of the department, Academician Kafarov, to place her boy in good hands. To cut a long story short, Valera had a tremendous influence on my subsequent engineering career and largely shaped my worldview and understanding of what is good and what is wrong. It was about him that I was writing the "My Mentor" essay during the psychotest.
There were three more guys in his group: two from the sophomore year - Volodya and Yura, and one even from my group - Igor. Valera was not tall but a solid guy; he was only six years older than us but demanded a certain level of respect and distance and, as I now understand, was a charismatic leader. I heard the guys call him Valera, and I also tried to address him simply by name - he cut me off:
- To some folks, it’s Valera, to others, it’s Valery Victorovich. Start working, and then we’ll see which one you belong to.
Soon, I realized that this was fair: I knew very, very little; for example, after three years of studying cybernetics as my major, I was not only unable to say what a mathematical model was but had never even asked that question.
Fortunately, it turned out that it was just a system of equations describing the behavior of some object, and the task of mathematical modeling was to write these equations and, if possible, solve them - which I, in fact, had been doing for the next forty-five years, with occasional breaks for rewriting my resume.
Valery Victorovich was busy developing a system for modeling chemical and technological systems to automate various engineering calculations. The SYNSYS – ‘Synthesis of Systems’ program did practically the same thing as the American Aspenplus program. So, when I received it on seven floppies from Damir and installed this famous ASPEN on my computer, it turned out that I could work with it and knew its structure, capabilities, basic algorithms, and methods. This serendipity was explained by the fact that both our Moscow Valera’s team and the AspenTech developers in Boston drew their main ideas from the same book “Chemical Plant Simulation” by Cameron Crowe.
During our first meeting, Valera unfolded a sheet in front of me with a diagram of rectangles connected by arrows and offered to choose what I wanted to do. I later realized that this was the so-called conceptual diagram of the SYNSYS program. Each rectangle had words written on it, most of which were unknown or incomprehensible to me: “Iteration,” “Properties,” “Uncertainty,” “Regression,” “Multivariability,” and so on. I didn’t dare to choose anything until I saw the “Optimization” block and pointed to it with my finger - we were told about optimization in one of the mathematical courses.
- Excellent, - said Valera. - No one except me has been working on this so far. And he wrote my initials under optimization. – Take this book by David Himmelblau and find the algorithm for optimization of a function using the Nelder-Mead method. Program it by tomorrow, and then we’ll test it on sample problems.
- What do you mean by program?
- In the literal sense, use the Fortran language.
- But I don’t know it; we’ve only recently started learning Algol. - Valera showed a slight irritation.
- Well, take a textbook and read it! There’s not much to learn about Fortran – there are just three operators. Forget about Algol; it’s a waste of time. Now, let’s go to the table; it’s time for dinner.
I don’t remember what food was served for dinner, but I remember that Volodya – presumably just returning from the liquor store – opened a “diplomat” case and took out four bottles of vodka for the five of us. Everyone drank back then: academics, professors, associate professors, graduate students, lab assistants, and students. However, the drinking culture at the Cybernetics Department was beyond comprehension, even for someone raised in Russia. Still, now I think that by curbing this institutionalized drinking, I could have achieved much more in life, even though I was fortunate with my academic supervisor, Valera. When I studied at the Mendeleev Institute in the Cybernetics Department, there were about a dozen young professors and associate professors who had defended brilliant doctoral dissertations before the age of forty and wrote incredible books on chemical engineering, but, as far as I know, few of them lived to be fifty.
The next day, I probably didn’t accomplish anything, and I couldn’t make it to the institute for classes. Still, a week later, I handed Valera an optimization method programmed in Fortran.
- Good job, - Valera praised briefly, - rewrite it on the forms and take it to the girls on the fifth floor in the punched-card room. - By evening, I received a deck of punched cards about an inch thick from the girls and brought it to the computing center of the institute, where the ES-1020 computer was located. Valera and his students worked on the machine themselves without the help of operators. My friend Igor helped me load the punched cards into the input device and pressed the “Start” button. The device fed the cards into itself, and then the CPU rattled, giving me a printout of the program. Instead of the result, it printed “ERROR 00A1FD,” and that was it.
I showed it to Valera; he looked at my printout for three seconds and said:
- Run and get a bottle of vodka. - I understood that this was a “rabbi gelt” – a fee for teaching in the form of alcoholic beverages – and rushed to the store.
- Did you bring it? - Valera pointed to the second line on my printout. - A comma is needed here. – And we sat down to have dinner right in the computing center.
The next day, I added the comma, entered my cards into the computer, and got the error 00A34D.
- You’re making progress, Dima. Do you know where the liquor store is now? - Valera was relentless. Everything was the same, but I had an extra asterisk in my third operator this time, and the calculations stopped there. It was frustrating, and I regretted the money: I spent almost eight rubles on consultations in two days with a monthly stipend of forty-six. I complained to Igor, meaning that this scientific work would bankrupt me. He shrugged: - Everyone went through this. Try reading the Fortran language manual.
The suggestion shocked me with its simplicity. After receiving a similar computational error for the third time, I took the book. I quickly figured out how to find the mistake in the program based on the given hexadecimal code. A few days later, my program worked and was incorporated into SYNSYS as a process optimization block, and I was granted the right to call Valery Viktorovich just by his short name, Valera. However, I never managed to apply his “liquor store method” of programming education – it seems to be specific to Russian conditions.
The first version of SYNSYS-77 was released at the end of 1976, and I used it for my diploma thesis and seven years later for my Ph.D. dissertation. During this time, I continued collaborating with Valera’s group and participated in developing new blocks for the system. What still astonishes me is the scarcity of computational resources available to us at that time. The ES-1020 mainframe computer had an operational memory - RAM of 128 kilobytes(!), not megabytes but kilobytes, approximately a million times less than a modern iPhone’s. To run SYNSYS on such a machine, the program had to be divided into 30-40 parts, which were fetched into memory sequentially as the calculations progressed.
Nevertheless, SYNSYS-85 was more powerful and better than the 1991 version of ASPEN, with which I started working in Israel. Who knows how the situation in the software market would have unfolded if not for the Gorbachev-led Perestroika: in the late ’80s, we all, in one way or another, started engaging in some form of commerce, including myself and Valera. Valery Victorovich founded a highly successful cartography company, and SYNSYS was abandoned. Now that Aspentech has become a multi-billion-dollar company, practically dominating global technological process modeling, I think we should have commercialized SYNSYS back then. However, the circumstances weren’t favorable, and we didn’t grasp our value. Once, maybe after the third bottle of vodka, Valera told us that one line of program code in the West could cost $20, and we all laughed heartily: at that time, a working version of SYNSYS consisted of 50,000 lines, which means it would be worth a million. Who would buy it? [content]
KINETICS
Somewhere around six months after starting work at Brom, Damir assigned me the task of checking the kinetics of the reaction between methyl alcohol and hydrobromic acid (HBr), which produced methyl bromide—a substance used for treating (fumigating) grain stored in elevators. Under elevated pressure, methyl bromide is a liquid, and it is poured directly onto the grain in elevators, slowly evaporating and killing pests such as beetles and mice. It prevents the grain from rotting. Two days later, and it’s all gone—evaporated, with no danger left. Nowadays, methyl bromide is prohibited because it is harmful to humans (What isn’t a poison?), but more importantly, it contributes to ozone layer depletion. At that time, however, it was sold in all countries, contributing about 40% of Brom’s revenue.
Kinetics refers to the speed of a reaction: the higher the speed, the higher the productivity of a chemical reactor, the lower the production costs, and the higher the profit. Reaction kinetics depend on temperature, pressure, and the concentration of reactants. Following Brom’s management instructions, the Haifa Technological Institute conducted several hundred experiments, varying these parameters and measuring the corresponding rate of methyl bromide formation. Damir assigned me the task of deriving the reaction rate equation that would include these parameters.
I enthusiastically took on the task. Fortunately, the experiment report was in English, and ASPEN was unnecessary. I entered all the data into Excel and started adjusting the coefficients of the equation. The methodology was familiar; I had dealt with this kinetics since my college days in Professor Pisarenko’s laboratory. He was incredibly talented as a teacher, and wrote an excellent book, but, to my most profound regret, he fell victim to a car accident. First, you need to “invent” or hypothesize the reaction mechanism: how the molecules collide, exchange parts, and in what order. Then, you formulate the kinetic equation for this mechanism. Finally, check how accurately this equation describes the available experimental data. If it fits well, the mechanism is likely correct; if not, you must try another mechanism concept.
I started with a second-order reaction, which seemed most appropriate—no luck. Then, I tried the first order— even worse, something doesn’t work. I plotted several graphs and understood why scientists from Haifa Tech conducted experiments themselves but left the data processing and kinetic modeling to the client, our Bromine Company—the graphs made no sense! If you look at the dependence of the rate on the acid concentration, at 48% acid, the rate goes straight to infinity, an equation of the power of ten, approximately. Formally, this means that 10 molecules of HBr acid are simultaneously involved in the reaction, which is almost impossible to imagine unless some complex is formed, but no one has ever encountered such a thing. On the other hand, with methyl alcohol, it’s the opposite: as the concentration increases, the reaction rate accelerates very slowly, like half a molecule of alcohol reacts with ten molecules of hydrobromic acid—again, that can’t be true!
I read the description of the experimental setup and the analytical methods used, and everything seemed correct. I rechecked my calculations—perhaps an error by a factor of a hundred, a percentage conversion mistake, but no. I twisted and turned the data, and suddenly, it seemed that I had seen similar curves somewhere. I opened the equilibrium handbook and saw a very familiar curve for the vapor pressure of hydrobromic acid as a function of its concentration in water: up to 48% acid, very low vapor pressure, and then it increases exponentially, faster than even the power of ten. Then, the rate of pressure growth slows down, but in Haifa, they didn’t measure anything above 50% acid concentration because Brom didn’t order it.
For alcohol, a similar concentration in the vapor above water solutions increases slowly, just like the reaction rate in the graphs. Now, everything fits: the reaction “simply” occurs not in the liquid but instead in the vapor phase. Eureka! Liquid phase reaction between HBr acid and methyl alcohol also takes place, only a hundred times slower than in vapor.
Of course, I was overjoyed; I rechecked and recalculated everything for different temperatures and derived a simple and beautiful model: one molecule of alcohol reacts with one molecule of acid, but in the gas phase, producing methyl bromide, also a gas. I wrote a report and a memo to Damir and his boss, Eitan, suggesting future process and reactor optimization considering the new kinetics, additional experiments, and exploring ways to obtain similar bromides to see where the main reaction occurs—maybe patenting a new process.
Next day Damir came to my room, praised me, and said he sent my report to Haifa, but there’s no possibility of pursuing this direction now: it’s not our priority; there’s a lot of urgent work. Perhaps someday, but here’s a new project for you, Dima.
It was heartbreaking to abandon this topic; it seemed very promising. But arguing with the management was not an option, especially when you’ve only been in the country for six months and know only “Kama ze ole?” and “Ma ha sha’a?” in Hebrew.
Anyway, I switched to other projects. However, after two or three months, I entered the pilot plant laboratory and saw that our technician had assembled a new experiment setup.
- Roni, what is this column? What are you working on?
- Well, - Roni said, - we’re conducting experiments on the synthesis of methyl bromide in the gas phase. Damir oversees everything; he came up with a new idea, so all other lab work had to be postponed.
- How long have you been working on this? - Roni looked at the journal and extracted a date for me. Strangely enough, it was the day I sent my report on the kinetics model to Damir.
*
I remember being very angry and upset at that time. How could “They” just take and appropriate my idea, disregarding the inventor? Later in my practice, there were several such cases, and they didn’t happen only to me: promising ideas were passed on to others, inventors were excluded from patent applications, or they were completely unaware that their superiors had patented something they had invented– it was often very frustrating and embarrassing... But now, recalling that first case, I think that if someone like wunderkind Damir, who finished high school at fifteen, graduated from university at nineteen, served in the army until he became a major, and simultaneously defended his doctoral dissertation, became the head of the laboratory in four years of work at Brom, and spoken nine languages, went to such lengths, then someone who figured out that the reaction occurred in the gas phase must have invented something valuable. Not everyone has something worth stealing. [content]
STRIPPER
Damir had a global idea to model all the Bromine Company's leading processes and optimize them to increase productivity and product quality. However, reality constantly forced us to deviate from this plan for more urgent tasks. One day, the door to my room burst open with a powerful kick, and someone, introduced by Damir as Shimon Abu, the chief engineer of plant #720, rushed in. He needed to quickly (“By lunch, moteq!”) calculate the operating modes of the water purification column from dissolved MDC - methylene dichloride. In professional jargon, such a column is called a “stripper.” We communicated through Damir, who translated for me from Hebrew to English and backward, and some details might have escaped me. I calculated several options using the Aspen simulator, printed out a table of results and handed it to Shimon, who returned five minutes before the lunch break. I promptly forgot about it.
I remembered this case about three years later when the door was opened again in the same way - with Shimon’s foot. By that time, I had already understood Hebrew.
- Dimi-i-itri-i-i, your stripper isn’t working! Why?! - he was clearly irritated and never called me “moteq,” which means “sweety.”
- What’s the matter, ma ba’aya? - I asked timidly, trying to remember where I had seen this person. - What stripper?
- The one we have on #720, of course. It’s been three days since we started, and we keep getting residual methylene chloride over 400 units, while it should be less than 10, according to your calculations!
It turned out that after I made those calculations for him a few years ago, a real column was built, and not a small one: 15 meters high and one and a half meters in diameter. No one asked me about anything – that was the style in the company. I had heard nothing about the column construction, but now it turned out that it was “my design,” and I had to fix “my mistake.”
Damir appeared, followed by his boss, Eitan. Shimon Abu had already briefed them on the situation: they knew about the existence of the stripper but not about the problems. Indeed, they had no idea I was involved in the design, but I was their employee, and managers ought to react. It was decided to send me for a week to the #720 plant, which is 20 kilometers from Beer-Sheva, in a locality called Ramat Hovav.
Shimon met me in his office less hostilely than I expected but with some curiosity, like, “Well, simulator guy, got caught? What are you going to do?” Later, I realized that it was a demonstration of the eternal conflict between theory and practice: “We work in production, solve real problems, and these guys just press buttons and try to teach us!” And here I was, thinking we complemented each other and worked on something common. After all, he came to me to calculate the column rather than doing it himself, using the Thiele and Geddes method.
We went to the workshop to see the stripper: water contaminated with MDC is fed from the top, and live steam is fed from below. MDC evaporates and escapes through the pipe at the top, while purified water drains from the bottom. I asked the technician how much steam they were injecting, and he handed me the work log. Every hour had an identical record: “Steam rate: 800 kilograms per hour.”
- Strange, - I said, - why so little? According to the calculation, it should be 2000.
- There are two reasons for that, the technician replied. - First, our steam indicator shows only from zero to 800 kg, so even if you fully open the steam valve, the device still cannot show more than 800. And in the log, we must record what is on the indicator – it always turns out to be 800 or less.
At this point, Shimon became somewhat irritated. He seemed to have visited the workshop with me for the first time, and he expressed his dissatisfaction with the operator, but so quickly and in such terms that my knowledge of Hebrew was insufficient to understand the essence of the complaints, except for the vulgar “berez dafuk,” meaning the steam valve is not working.
- Oh, and secondly, - the worker continued, - if you open the valve more, the pressure in the column sharply increases, and the steam interlock is triggered. - At that moment, they brought an analysis of the wastewater – 405 ppm of residual DMC, and the target was 10 – too bad.
- They will change the steam indicator tomorrow, - Shimon muttered and disappeared.
Tomorrow came three days later – they installed a new device, and the operator, junior engineer Misha Gelman, and I started slowly increasing the steam supply. As we reached 1100 kilograms, the pressure in the column sharply jumped, and the steam interlock was triggered. We did an analysis – residual MDC: 360 ppm. In the evening, I recalculated the stripper on Aspen – everything seemed correct: at 1100 kg of steam, the purity should be 350 units, but to purify it to 10, we need 2000 kg of steam!
I called Damir and explained the situation, and he pondered for a moment before saying,
- There’s a very similar stripper in the Netherlands at the ‘Broomchemie’ plant, which belongs to our Brom company. I’ll contact them and ask for their advice. - At that time, I hadn’t even heard of the bromine plant in the Netherlands, but later, I frequently visited it for work and even optimized their stripper. But that’s another story.
Soon, an answer came from the Netherlands; they sent us a fax - email wasn’t popular yet, with the operating instructions for their MDC stripper. As I read it, I suddenly noticed a small pump on the diagram. “What does it do?” I asked. “It pumps an anti-foaming agent into the stripper, only three liters per hour,” came the reply. “And why is this agent needed?” I continued reading. “Because in the raw water, apart from methylene chloride, there’s also a detergent - a cleaning agent, which enters the system during reactor washing.” I felt like I was onto something.
The following day, I went to Shimon’s office and casually asked:
- Can water from reactors washing get into our stripper?
- Of course, - he said, - everything gets there. Why?
- Do they use detergent there?
- How else? - replied the lead engineer. - Look, Dimitri, you’re sitting behind your computer, not knowing simple things.
- But I know that thanks to detergent water foams in the stripper, pressure rises, and the column “chokes... You should have told me about it during the design three years ago.
In short, engineer Misha and I found a small pump, installed a barrel with an anti-foaming agent, and started slowly pumping it into the column. We increased the steam: 1200...1500...2000 kilograms, and the pressure in the stripper was normal. After half an hour, we took an analysis: residual MDC – 20 units, and another half an hour later, only 6 (!) – much below the specification, almost exactly like in the simulation.
Shimon arrived, looked at the work log, and said, “You know, moteq, now design us a similar stripper, just three times larger.” [content]
DELICACY
Although a simple apparatus, a stripper, its construction and operation are studied in a technical school, at the course “Processes and Apparatuses” taught by Solomon Zakharovich Kagan during our sophomore year in the Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Technology. Kagan had one glass eye, but at the same time, he had an amazing ability to write formulas on the board and simultaneously see what was happening in the audience:
- Zubakova, take your notes; you can kiss him after the exam when you get a positive grade.
And if you, Reader, haven’t taken this P&A course, or perhaps you were distracted during lectures by your neighbor, the previous material might have seemed a bit heavy. Well, for a change, let’s talk about everyday topics, about analytical chemistry.
In our technological laboratory, led by Damir, there were several experimental setups or rigs where we conducted various experiments, primarily to collect necessary data for modeling or to confirm my simulation results on Aspen. And when you do experiments, you take multiple samples that need to be analyzed to determine the composition of materials and properties. These analyses were performed in the analytical laboratory in the adjacent building. Women mainly worked in the laboratory, but the head was Yossi Matalon, a quite imposing silver-haired man in his fifties.
Technicians usually transported samples to the analytical lab. Still, I preferred doing it myself to be able to better explain the task and the nature of my samples to the analysts. I must note that these explanations had to be done delicately to avoid offending laboratory staff; analytical chemists are among the most sensitive human beings in the world. For instance, my friend Yasha, with whom I underwent a psychotest, didn’t grasp this at all. He could enter the lab, throw a paper sheet with results on the table, and shout, “I don’t know how many times you’ve messed up concentrations: ten or a hundred! Please, redo the analysis!” Although he didn’t look at anyone individually and didn’t accuse anyone personally, the analytical ladies would still get offended.
Once, during a ride back from work on the company bus shuttle, I got acquainted with one of our company’s employees, named N. She happened to work as a chemist in that analytical laboratory and later agreed to marry me. Someday, she’ll write her own reminiscences and clarify any details that my memory might have distorted. Even then, N was incredibly productive, conducting a hundred analyses daily with a norm of eight.
However, when I brought my analyses or came to pick up the results, N, despite being fully committed, always found time to make a cup of coffee with me. At the same time, she explained the sample preparation methods, analytical techniques, and the groundlessness of my doubts about the results. As far as I remember, N always worked alone during my visits to the lab, and when the head, Yossi Matalon, needed something, he would patiently knock on the door before entering...
Ironically, after Yossi retired, Yasha became the head of the analytical lab. [content]
PINK ENVELOPE
Although I worked for Bromine Company, in essence, I was something like an intern or trainee. My salary was paid by the Ministry of Absorption of Israel, thus supporting the employer’s interest in a non-Hebrew-speaking and inexperienced-in-Israel worker, but a free one. This financing system was called the “Shapiro Scholarship,” and nobody questioned what it meant; people just said about engineers like me, “he's sitting on Shapiro." Strangely, the system was named after an actual official overseeing this program, and Shapiro turned out to be a genuine person I even met a few years later.
From the day I joined Brom, the company extended my grant, meaning the work contract, every six months. This happened without my involvement, as if automatically. Still, the maximum duration of "sitting on Shapiro" was two years. And just at the end of my fourth half-year term, on a Thursday evening, I took a pink envelope out of my drawer, the ones they use to send dismissal letters. I opened it, and sure enough, even with my basic Hebrew, I understood: "We inform you that as of July 4th, 1993, Bromine Compounds is severing all relations with you." One line. I felt somewhat hurt; no one had talked to me about it. I went home, shared the news with my wife and kids, and called Misha B. — he came, checked my translation—all accurate, had a drink, and cheerfully said we'd look for a new job. Still, the weekend was significantly spoiled.
On the following Sunday, precisely the 4th of the month, I went to work, copied the most crucial files to a floppy disk, just in case, and went to say goodbye to Damir.
- To whom should I return my lab overall, boots, and helmet? - I asked.
- Why do you need to return them? - he replied with surprise.
- Is it necessary to return work attire upon the conclusion of employment?
- And where did you get the idea that you're being terminated? - I showed him the pink envelope, and he chuckled relaxedly.
- Did no one tell you anything? They're letting you go as a Shapiro scholar—two years maximum, you know. But starting today, you're enrolled as a permanent employee at the company. Congratulations! You can simply continue working, and you'll get a new overall and a winter jacket.
I sat at the computer; my hands trembled, letters and numbers blurred, and my head pounded: "Why couldn't he just tell me? Why is it okay to treat me like this?"
Later, I discovered that Eitan, Damir's boss, was supposed to inform me about the permanent position, but being a known nonchalant person, he simply forgot about such a trifle. On the same day, I was summoned to the corporate HR department in Beit Macleff building and handed a letter on blue(!) official paper about my enrollment in the company. The two-page letter listed what seemed like fantastical conditions and benefits: a threefold increase in salary, forty working days of vacation, and a multitude of pension contributions, but the pink envelope was still vivid in my mind. [content]
KVIYUT
When it comes to trade unions, many of my acquaintances scrunch up their faces disdainfully, especially those who emigrated from the USSR straight to America. The former might of American unions is now entirely gone: for decades, the mass media spread various rumors that union members only worked at the most profitable places while all others did the dirty work; the top leadership was corrupt, and unions were unnecessary, hindering computerization, automation, and labor productivity growth. This was true in many ways, and the criticism was based on facts. Still, the pendulum clearly swung in the other direction and stayed there: uncontrolled capitalists started getting richer unchecked, and the wage gap between, let's say, a worker and an owner increased by tens and hundreds of times, causing dissatisfaction among the people and giving powerful fuel to socialist and communist propaganda. Grandpa Marx turned out to be correct. To maximize profits further and deprive the working class of any chance for a union revival, production was gradually moved abroad, where you could deal with workers using any methods, even undemocratic ones, like machine guns.
Before coming to Israel, I didn't know this, and I had a somewhat negative attitude toward Unions, primarily because in the Soviet Union, they dealt with everything except protecting workers' rights. They supported the party's leadership and collected small contributions, mainly used, I don't even know where—maybe for vacation homes and free trips for union leaders. But here, in Israel, everything turned out to be different, and I only learned about it after two years of working on the Shapiro scholarship when they gave me a permanent position at Brom, that is, they gave me a "Kviyut."
The word "kviyut" in Hebrew means "permanence," indicating a permanent job and employee status within the company. For those unfamiliar with Israel, it's essential to explain that in America, for instance, there is also the concept of a permanent job or position, but ending this "permanent" position for the employer is more effortless than peeing in the shower (apologies for the crudeness, but no other comparison comes to mind): there is no need to the employer to warn or explain anything. Of course, it’s very different when trying to eliminate a minority, but that is not my case. You arrive at work in the morning, and your magnetic card doesn't work at the entrance; you look up and see a lovely HR worker on the other side of the gate with an Italian-sounding surname, like Bellucci. "Don't bother," says this Monica, "your card is deactivated, and you don't need it anymore; you no longer work for us. Come with me, let's sign some papers." - The reason? "Well, we're going through a reorganization, and your position is being eliminated." That's it. You can sign that you're satisfied and have no claims against the company, or you can refuse to sign. In both cases, they give you a cardboard box; you put pictures of your kids and wife. Monica escorts you to the gate, asking you to return the parking pass.
- Can this happen in Israel?
- Yes, absolutely!
- Even to someone with Kviyut status? Can I be fired?
- Yes, you can, but..."
- Due to company downsizing?
- No, the company must provide you with another job in such a case.
- Due to professional unsuitability?
- There haven't been such precedents.
- For violating safety regulations?
- That's your management's problem; it means they didn't instruct and train you adequately.
- But can they still?
- Yes, Moteq, let me finish. For murder or theft of the company's property in a massive amount, you'll be fired, if the Union agrees.
- But I'm not a union member.
- Sure, you are. You're an engineer automatically enrolled in the Engineers and Technical Workers Union. Any questions?
Several years later, I witnessed such a case: four workers—the entire work shift—fell asleep near a 4000-gallon reactor, where a hazardous, more accurately, explosive chemical reaction was taking place. They were caught and rudely awakened by the chief technologist, who went into a fit of rage, vowing that their feet would not touch the factory, and he filed a corresponding report. Then, one of the four was an intern-student—he was promptly expelled, and no one saw him again. The rest, with permanent positions (kviyutnicks), required the Union's consent for dismissal, and considering that there was none, firing them was out of the question. "The people were tired (this is not America!), they inhaled the solvent vapors, and they fainted." The administration backtracked, deciding to fine them one month's salary with deductions for six months and withholding the thirteenth bonus salary. The Union disapproved—too harsh. In the end, they deducted about a week's salary from them, if I remember correctly, and that was all.
Not all company employees have this "Kviyut" status – I just got lucky and fell into some kind of campain when they were giving it to newcomers, while others could work waiting for "Kviyut" for twenty years. Anyone who has read Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" may remember that there were people of different castes, named after the Greek alphabet: alpha, beta, gamma... and the last one, epsilon – the untouchables. So, at Brom, there was a similar situation: permanent company employees were divided into categories (‘dorot’) – Alef and Bet. Everything was the same for them, except for payment: the Alef, under otherwise equal conditions, received 30% more, including pension contributions, bonuses, and the number of vacation days. I do not know how this division originated; perhaps it reflects some past union struggle in the early years of the State of Israel. About half of Brom's employees were permanent, while the others worked through intermediary companies and were not admitted to the joint feast. When, on the holiday of Tu-B’shvat, the Alefs received huge baskets of fruits, the other Epsilons looked away. By the way, the company's management, the so-called "bahirim" (the enlightened ones), didn't have "Kviyut," but in terms of benefits—baskets, they were considered equivalent to Alef.
It turned out that along with "Kviyut, I also fell into the Alef category. Literally, a golden rain poured over me: my salary, compared to the Shapiro allowance, tripled, a 13th monthly salary at the end of the year as a bonus, and a 14th salary for health recovery. Corporate contributions to five different funds: pension and qualification enhancement, an additional payment for a doctoral degree, overtime pay of 150–200%, and an extra day off for the night shift. And the vacation was decent, too—40 working days. It seemed a bit much to me, so I asked:
- Is this true?
- Well, - they explained to me in the HR department, - not entirely. You are entitled only to 28 vacation days, but there's also the ‘prize i’hadrut.’ You get an additional vacation day every month if you don't arrive late for work.
- So, I shouldn't be late each working day during a month ?
- No, of course, lateness happens, but the total time of your lateness for the month shouldn't exceed 4 hours.
To and from work, you are taken in a company minibus shuttle called the "ride," but if you want, you can use your car – the company covers its insurance. In the morning, you go straight to breakfast: they only serve dairy on dishes with a blue rim, and lunch is meaty – with a red rim, so as not to accidentally violate kashrut. In Israel, they love coffee, and drinking three or five cups daily is not uncommon. The Union administration knew about this habit, so on the first of each month, they brought a large box to each laboratory: four packs of ground coffee and a kilogram of sugar per person. The first shift ends at 4 o'clock, but if you need to stay for work longer, dinner is served at 5 o'clock: you order something from the menu a couple of hours in advance; I remember my favorite was roasted goose with apples.
Those who work well should also rest enough: a "Kviyut" worker is entitled to an extra two weeks of paid vacation per year, organized by the company and the Union. One vacation is local in Israel, usually on the Red Sea in Eilat, in a five-star hotel, all-inclusive, for the whole family. They give you coupons worth of 1000 shekels for various attractions, such as water skiing or aquarium visits, to entertain the kids. The second vacation is supposed to be without children, only with your spouse, or as is now customary, with your domestic partner. But, in return, this time you are taken to travel abroad: it could be nearby, to Greece or Turkey, or a cruise in the Mediterranean, and when they fly you to America by plane, only in this case, the vacation has to be stretched for about three weeks – going so far for just one week is not worth it.
***
I moved from New York to Massachusetts and worked as a senior engineer at the Waters Corporation plant. We sit in the cafeteria at shabby plastic tables with Hank, a Vietnam War veteran, and Steven, a safety engineer old enough to be my father. We eat sandwiches brought from home and wash them down with cold Coca-Cola. If you want coffee, there's a vending machine, and a cup costs fifty cents, but you don't want it, trust me. Everyone is tired, especially yours senior engineer, who has just poured twenty buckets of methanol into the reactor manually. And relaxing, I inadvertently tell them about " Kviyut " and the working conditions in Israel. Hank shakes his head more and more incredulously and finally can't take it anymore:
- Dimitri, you're lying; it can't be true! Forty days of vacation?
- No, Hank, I'm not lying, and they take Alephs on sea cruises; a whole ship was filled with just company employees!
- If you're not lying, why did you leave from there, idiot? - Steven finishes me off. And rightfully so, I never told anyone in America again about "Kviyut " [content]
NAHUM
In the first years of our stay in Israel, my mom wrote to me quite often, and in one of the letters, she asked me, if possible, to help the son of one of her acquaintances from Irkutsk. It should be noted that my mom had many dozens, if not hundreds, of friends and acquaintances in all major cities of the Soviet Union, republics, and countries of the people's democracy. Firstly, these were, of course, her students and graduate students, and besides, she liked to attend conferences and symposia, deliver lectures on organic chemistry as a visiting professor, and get acquainted with colleagues – teachers and scientists. My mom loved helping people, and here was just such a case: Professor G. from Irkutsk University informed her that his son Nahum was repatriated to Beer-Sheva and could not find a job for several months – a chemical engineer, a Ph.D., like me.
Naturally, I couldn't refuse my mom, and I tried to find Nahum: there was no address for him, but I went to the Sochnut (Jewish Agency), where all arriving engineers and scientists were registered, and luckily, they told me his place of residence. Nahum lived in a small, rented apartment; I rang the bell and introduced myself: he didn't show much interest in me, but he had heard something about my mom from his dad, and I managed to get in. To put it mildly, the atmosphere was not conducive to conversation: no air conditioning – stuffy, a bit dirty, and nowhere to sit, and I suggested going to my place. We got into my new car, and a few minutes later, we were sitting at the table; my wife prepared dinner, I opened a bottle of vodka, and closer to dessert, Nahum relaxed slightly and told his story. He came to Israel alone about two years ago, learned Hebrew in an ulpan, like everyone else, and then got a job in the physical properties laboratory at Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva.
- If you, Dima, only knew what kind of dummies (rus: kozly!) there were! They know nothing, yet they put a Doctor of Sciences to measure pure nonsense on an ancient device! And for a pittance! Five months later, I quit – pushing carts in a supermarket is better! My feet won't be there!
I liked him: a conscientious person; not everyone would slam the door like that – I must help. We'd eaten and drunk enough. Nahum's face acquired a rosy shade, and the remnants of his red curls slightly moistened. His gray eyes sparkled metallically as he talked about how, shortly before leaving Russia, he published a book, or rather, a study guide on physical chemistry for students. He did his dissertation at MIChM under Professor Barzukhin, whom I knew and had met several times at conferences. His laboratory calculated properties of multicomponent mixtures, and I noted that Nahum worked in this area at Ben-Gurion University.
In turn, I told Nahum about my work at Brom, a technological laboratory at a pilot plant, developing new and improving old processes. If he's interested, I can recommend him to my superiors. The question, of course, was rhetorical – it's clear that he needs a job, and Brom, to put it mildly, is not the worst place in Beer-Sheva to work. He left me his resume and said goodbye, and I merely escorted him to the bus – I couldn't drive anymore.
***
The next day, I gave Nahum's resume to my boss, Damir, and soon he was invited for an interview at the plant. Besides Damir, the head of the pilot plant, Eitan, also questioned him. Then, I took Nahum to tour the plant and laboratories, and he departed. I went to ask Damir – How was it?
- Do you know him well?
- Not really, but he seems like an excellent physical chemist. He did his dissertation in Moscow with the renowned professor Barzukhin, and I think we need someone like him to arrange component properties for modeling.
- Menie on nie nravizza (I didn't like him much) - Damir said in Russian and then switched to English. - No production experience at all, but Eitan said that since he's a new repatriate, we could try. We'll hire him as an engineer, 9th grade, with a six-month probation period. I have a request for you: contact his Moscow professor and ask a reference. And his Hebrew is much better than yours, Dima.
At that time I was in the 10th grade of the salary ladder then, but I had already worked for two years. There were 13 levels for engineers and technicians in Israel, and for managers, there was a separate career ladder of six rungs.
To make it short, Nahum started working and reported to Damir, but I had to bring him up to speed and get him busy. A new project on extracting iodine from the Dead Sea brine was at its inception, and I asked my new fellow worker to gather literature and write a review on iodine technology, giving him all the articles and patents I had amassed by that time."
- And what will you be working on? - Nahum asked suspiciously, as it seemed to me.
- I would continue working on the bromine purification column from chlorine. There are experimental data collected, and they need to be processed.
- So, you're putting me to plow the 'virgin' iodine field? And you'll be rolling with the finished product? What if I don't achieve anything in six months? - I was a bit perplexed; it seemed he wasn't joking and genuinely believed I was setting him up.
- Well, if you want to deal with bromine, I'll talk to Damir and...
- Forget it, give me your papers on iodine – I'll read them! - Nahum cut me off mid-sentence, and we went to lunch. The cafeteria and food didn't appeal to him either. In the evening, I decided that if Damir wanted it, I should request a recommendation from Nahum's academic supervisor. I wrote a letter to a friend working at MIChM and asked him to contact Professor Barzukhin.
***
Two weeks passed. On the Thursday before the weekend, we received our paychecks, or rather, receipts for the money transfer to the bank account. I approached Nahum and cheerfully asked:
- So, pal, are you pleased? Want to have a beer to celebrate your first paycheck? - He turned to me; his face paled, and the red curls around his tonsure straightened.
- How can I be satisfied when I get 3500, and you're getting 4 thousand?
It seemed like I conveyed that three and a half thousand shekels were better than nothing. After that, I didn't feel like drinking beer, so I gathered my stuff and headed to the plant gates, forgetting to offer Nahum a customary ride home. Passing by the mailboxes, I noticed something white in mine. It was a fax from Professor Barzukhin with a short characterization: "A DILLETANT AND EXCEPTIONAL SLACKER."
I returned, found Damir, and showed him the sheet, trying my best to translate the content into English. He nodded approvingly – as if he was right all along – and told me that he had also called Professor Dershowitz at Ben-Gurion University, where Nahum had worked, and learned that they fired him from the physical lab because he had a habit of clocking in early in the morning, then sneaking out through the back door to wander somewhere and returning by the end of the workday.
After that, my relationship with Nahum became purely formal. He tried to communicate more about work with Damir, and I had to do the iodine project myself. After six months, his contract was not renewed, and our paths diverged for many years. About ten years ago, Nahum unexpectedly called: he was visiting Boston and wanted to meet. We sat in a restaurant, and it turned out that he had graduated from the law faculty of Tel Aviv University and was working as a patent attorney in a good firm. We didn't mention the episode with the work at Brom. [content]
OPPONENT
Somewhere after the age of thirty, my memory noticeably began to fade: I would forget important dates, faces, names, and friends' phone numbers. During my own presentation, I could skip entire sections. However, a memorable incident occurred quite soon after I arrived in Israel; I don't recall exactly when. I had only completed the first level of ‘Ulpan’ – Hebrew language course; I had to work a lot, often stayed late, and had no time for organized learning. Besides, I sorely lacked Hebrew skills. So, I decided to engage in self-education: I would systematically study Hebrew verbs, or more precisely, the root bases or radicals consisting of three or four letters. Verbs are conjugated into several types, and according to specific rules, nouns, adverbs, adjectives, and the like are formed from each of them—pure mathematics, or rather, structural linguistics. I prepared large punch cards, one for each root base, and dedicated two or three hours every week to fill out such a card with conjugations, derivatives, literary examples of their use, and fixed phrases, which I tried to memorize thoroughly.
Things were going well until I reached the root ‘lamed-chet-mem,’ which means ”to fight" or “to battle” and also "bread," a somewhat strange combination of meanings, but nevertheless... I filled out the card and, feeling a sense of duty fulfilled, inserted it in my card file. Then, I took a special key card and recorded a new radical under number 13. Suddenly, I realized something was wrong: under number 5 in the list was also written ‘lamed-chet-mem.’ It couldn't be?! I grabbed my deck, and alas, on the fifth card, I saw almost the same thing I wrote today: bread, war, to fight, to battle, warrior. Two months had passed, and I was re-studying the same verb base without remembering that I had already done all of this before. Bummer! ‘Fashla!’ That's where my systematic self-education ended; as they say, the bell rang. But the worst came soon.
***
At Brom, I had been already working for several years, and occasionally, and even after the incident with Nahum, I was involved in interviewing candidates for jobs. One morning, Damir entered my office and asked me to interview a new repatriate from Russia who had applied for an engineering position. His name was Arkady Jacobson, a common surname, a Muscovite around 50 years old, short, with a Hemingway-esque beard. I read his resume: Doctor of Chemical Sciences, numerous publications, inventions, and, by all means, a prominent scientist who headed a laboratory at NIOPIK - Moscow Institute of Intermediates and Dyes. The position of an engineer was clearly below his qualifications. Still, in Brom and other Israeli companies in the early years after the massive Aliyah in 1991, there were quite a few such cases. Fortunately, they didn't offer him a lab assistant position right away. On the other hand, Arkady couldn't work independently at once without language skills. I recall a friend telling me his boss introduced him to the team when he was hired, saying, "This is our new employee, Doctor Edelman. He can't read or write."
As is customary in an interview, we talked with Arkady about what he did in his "previous life," and it turned out that he had an excellent understanding of bromine chemistry. He had worked with almost every substance manufactured by Brom and was well-versed in technology. It was a perfect fit, and there was no need to think twice; I would recommend his hiring without hesitation. I also told him about my work and the company's procedures, and towards the end, I decided to socialize a bit, as they say—have an informal chat.
- Arkady, you worked at NIOPIK, and my dad also worked there for a while. Maybe you knew him?
- Of course, I knew him, an outstanding chemist. Please send my regards.
- That's great, thanks; I'll pass it along. - Something in his tone pricked my discomfort.
- I also knew your mom and visited your home in Petrovsko-Razumovskoye. She cooks a wonderful duck with prunes. And I know you, too.
- What are you talking about? - I was already feeling quite uncomfortable. - I was probably still very young back then.
- Not that young. You defended your Ph.D., and I was your reviewing opponent from NIOPIK.
It felt like the chair beneath me was collapsing. So that's where the name Jacobson sounded familiar: NIOPIK was the leading organization that provided feedback on my dissertation. Apparently, my dad facilitated it, and Arkady Jacobson wrote my evaluation. I even gave a presentation in their lab.
Arkady looked at me sympathetically; there was nothing to say. We parted at the gate and never met again. He wasn't hired at Brom. [content]
FATHER'S INTERVIEW
As Jacobson correctly mentioned, my dad was a very talented chemist who dedicated most of his life to synthesizing new pharmaceuticals. In addition to chemistry, he knew biochemistry, medicine, and pharmacology and had an excellent understanding of technology, mechanics, and materials science. I studied at the same Mendeleev chemical technology institute thirty years after him, and I never ceased to be amazed at how much more profoundly he understood practically every aspect. Even when I settled in America, it was not uncommon for me to tell him about some problems I faced. He would ask questions, delve into a topic entirely new to him, and propose one or several solutions. I would voice them at work and receive credits—reflecting his brilliance. My mom, who was also an organic chemist and a professor, once admitted that, essentially, my dad guided her work during the preparation of both her master's and doctoral dissertations.
Once, we discussed the quality of education in the USSR and how he mastered the mandatory institute curriculum so thoroughly, not to mention subsequent specialization in organic chemistry. My engineering and chemical education was riddled with gaps. I had skipped some courses that seemed uninteresting or unnecessary, even though I graduated with honors. My dad's answer was something like this: when he returned in late 1945 from the war, it turned out that only two boys from his '41 class had survived. “I understood how incredibly lucky I was and what a great blessing it was to have the opportunity to study. This feeling "warmed" and motivated me so much that simply there were no uninteresting subjects... As in the popular song, I thought my dad lived and studied "for myself and for that guy," who did not return from the battlefield.
Having immigrated to Israel, I made numerous attempts to bring my parents there. They visited us many times; they liked the country; I took them almost everywhere, from Metula to Eilat. But they refused to repatriate: "We're still working, what will we do here?" Retirement was not even discussed then. Once, I decided to approach my dad, the more challenging subject, and came up with an idea:
- Dad, in Israel, you'll be a consultant!
- Where and for whom?
- With us, in Brom, in Beer-Sheva.
For my parents' next visit, I arranged a special interview for my dad in Brom. The primary assistance in organizing, and most likely the idea for the interview, came from my work colleague, the chemist Evgeny Tartakowsky. He was a veteran (vatick) who had arrived in Israel in the 70s, was well-versed in Hebrew, and he had essentially mentored nearly all the new repatriates, including myself, from the start of their employment at Brom. The interview meeting format was as follows: my dad was supposed to be asked five questions about issues concerning the Company, and he would suggest possible solutions. The panel consisted of Giora Agam, the director of the company's research center, Arye Kampf, the chief chemist, and Dror Mai, the chief technologist. Tartakowsky translated from Hebrew to Russian and back, and I was there as an observer.
Arye Kampf conducted the meeting, and it lasted for over two hours. As it turned out, my dad had worked a lot with bromine and compounds similar to the company's. He had a lot to share, and roles seemed to reverse a few times, with my dad posing questions. He would start each answer after a minute or two of contemplation, something like: "A similar synthesis was done at the Derbenevskiy chemical plant in 1957, but instead of sulfuric acid, we used hydrochloric acid and heated it not to 100 but to 105 degrees, and the yield was not 25 but only 18%."
Especially striking to everyone present was his response to Giora's question about why the reaction X wasn't working for us. My dad seemed genuinely pleased to answer: "Yes, we encountered the same issue at the photo-chemicals plant in Dolgoprudny chemical combinate. This chemical plant, which belonged to the IG Farbenindustrie, was wholly relocated to the Soviet Union per the Allies' mandated war reparations plan. The X reaction wasn't proceeding, even though we strictly followed the IGF protocols. We tried different methods until I thought to check the German reactor specification—it turned out it was made of aluminum, which somehow catalyzed the process. And in Dolgoprudnywe used a steel reactor because the original one was damaged during transportation." All our chemists exchanged glances, and Kampf quietly said to Giora, "We need to try it."
After the interview, Evgeny told us the management was "very impressed." My dad was also very pleased, saying, "You have good chemists, especially Kampf," which was the highest praise for him. A couple of days later, Evgeny informed us that my dad can be hired as a consultant at Brom for one year with a very decent salary, and Brom was ready to sign the contract. I was thrilled—now my parents would definitely move in with us. But my dad declined: "I'm already 73, I won't learn the language, I'll have to communicate through a translator, and I don't want to be a consultant. I love working with my hands in the Moscow lab, and it's sweltering here." None of my persuasions helped, and it seemed my mom was against it as well—she was still working at the time as professor of chemistry.
I managed to bring them out of Russia only seven years later after we had moved to America. By then, my mom had retired, but my dad continued working in the organic lab until the last day. Firing him, a WW2 veteran, was not an option in Russia. Once, we reminisced about that interview at Brom, and I praised his memory—how he remembered where, when, and what he did forty years ago. On contrary, he complained to me that his memory had sharply declined.
- You know, in 1959, in Dolgoprudny, we produced Substance "R" in an 18-step synthesis process, and I can't remember now...
- Can't remember those steps?
- Well, of course no, I remember all the reactions, but I forgot why we were making that substance. [content]
ROAR OF THE SURF
In the same room with me, there were three young Israeli engineers: Alon, Moti, and Gil, who had graduated from university three to five years ago and were working under the guidance of Eitan at an experimental plant; they didn't report to Damir, but they used the services of our technological laboratory. Most of the time, they were at the installations, but when more than one of them gathered in our room, a wild racket ensued: they didn't argue; they just talked so loudly and emotionally that it seemed like blood would spill any moment, which was, in fact, regular communication style in Middle Eastern culture. I didn't understand what they were saying, but they still distracted me, and at one point, I complained to Damir about the noise. He was startled, didn't say anything, and the next day brought me big headphones – like, work in silence, man. Complete isolation didn't happen, but after that, I worked as if under the roar of the surf, and then I took the headphones off so as not to alienate myself from the team. All the guys spoke English fluently, and we gradually started communicating, first about work and then on general topics.
But as my Hebrew improved, pleasant chaotic waves of sound began to crystallize into individual words, then sentences, and I began to understand the scope of discussions and what was happening, generally. I was especially amazed, and honestly, delighted, by the very high level of responsibility and decisions made by these young engineers: they were authorized to sign purchase orders for chemical devices costing tens of thousands of dollars, unwaveringly changed technological procedures, planned and conducted experiments that were quite, in my opinion, complex and risky, all without unnecessary bureaucracy, to which I had become so accustomed in the Soviet Union. They all continued their remote learning at Ben Gurion University for a second and even a third degree and quickly climbed the career ladder. For example, Moti was appointed the head of one of the company's large plants immediately after obtaining a master's degree. Still, in my presence at Brom, Alon became the head of the pilot plant and then the company's vice president.
After a year and a half, my admiration diminished a bit: in several cases, quick and bold decisions led to rather unpleasant results. Once Eitan sent me to Plant #730 and asked to check if the productivity of the main separation column could be increased – eventually there would be some benefit from your ASPEN simulator. I read the documentation, printed the technological process diagram, wore a helmet, and walked to #730. There, I was met by a young workshop manager named Uri, who had graduated from college two years ago and had been in this position for three months. We had coffee and went to see the plant in action. I checked against the map: here's the main reactor, here's my separation column, the purification system... stop! I don't see the heat exchanger HX-3; I asked where it went.
- We dismantled it last month, - says Uri.
- Why?
- It was redundant. The gas from the process (by the way, very toxic) is sequentially cooled in three heat exchangers and condensed, and the resulting liquid goes into the neutralizer; the substance is dangerous. I calculated that two condensers were enough, and HX-3 was unnecessary, so I decided to remove it. True, it was dropped and broken during dismantling - it was made of fragile graphite, but it doesn't matter; we wrote it off anyway.
- Okay, - I said, - if you calculated everything correctly, this apparatus is unnecessary. Let's move on.
We reached the last process step, and here Uri showed me a large tank.
- Here, the finished product X is collected before being sent to the warehouse. - "Odd, - I think, - I was sent here to increase the productivity of chemical Y?" And I asked Uri this question
– Could you clarify what are you actually doing here, X or Y?
- Very simple, - he explained with some superiority, - right now we're making X, and in the second half of the year, we'll be making Y, which is almost the same technologically as X, so we use the same equipment.
- Ah, now I understand, I was asked to deal with Y. – And then something clicked in my head, and I asked:
- By the way, does the production of Y release as much gas as it does now with X?
- I don't know, I haven't checked.
And I went and checked the balance: during the production of Y, it is released almost three times more gas; therefore, the third refrigerator is very much needed; without it, half of this gas will escape into the atmosphere. I called Uri and was afraid to upset him, but humbly informed him that working without the third heat exchanger, making the product Y would be impossible.
- Thanks, - Uri says, - now I grasp why it was installed. I'll order a new one; there's still time, and the old one broke anyway.
***
Another incident was more serious. It happened in the manufacturing unit where Brom was, and maybe still is, producing a chemical called TBS. It is used in the electronics industry, and there was a high demand for it, so they made a lot of TBS: six reactors, each with a volume of 4000 gallons, were working in parallel. To explain what happened, I'll have to tell you a little about chemistry – about reactions, bear with me.
In the reactor – like a big pot with a lid – they pour a solvent about halfway and dissolve the starting material BA in it. Then, they heat it slightly to speed up the reaction and slowly adding liquid bromine. Bromine reacts with BA, and TBS is formed. The solvent is and evaporated, and the product remains in the reactor.
So far, so good, but that's not all. It turns out that only half of the bromine reacts with BA, and the other half turns into acid and flies away into the vent pipe with the evaporated solvent – it's a pity to lose 50% bromine and it is not profitable. Another chemical, hydrogen peroxide, is added to the reactor to prevent this from happening. Yes, the same hydrogen peroxide is sold in pharmacies as a 5% aqueous solution for disinfecting wounds and is used as rocket fuel in concentrated form. You can be sure that ours was very concentrated.
Hydrogen peroxide reacts with acid, and it turns back into bromine. Peroxide doesn't mix with the solvent, like water with sunflower oil, so there is a large stirrer inside the reactor, which is turned by a powerful motor. If a chemist is reading these lines, he doesn't need further explanations, and others should be warned that without proper experience, it's not worth conducting this process on your own, especially in a 4000-gallon reactor.
But there's no need to be afraid either; if everything is done correctly, the reaction proceeds under complete control, in automatic mode, and the shift operators, numbering four people, only glance at the computer screens to ensure everything is in order. So, on that evening, the night shift charged the reactor with everything required and began to pump in bromine. As I mentioned, this should be done slowly: the reaction generates heat, and the cooling system needs to control the temperature. Three hours passed, and they sat down to have a snack; suddenly, one of the operators noticed that the stirrer was not turning. Odd: the screen showed a green indicator – everything was fine: 20 revolutions per minute, but it was visible that the stirrer shaft was not rotating – the motor tripped.
Such things (a double error) happen, though rarely: the motor stopped, the control system failed, and the emergency signal did not pop up. Now, a decision had to be made. It was unclear when the stirrer had stopped – five minutes ago or maybe an hour. Bromine is a very heavy liquid, three times denser than water, and if the stirring stops, it will simply flow to the bottom of the reactor, and its reaction with substance BA will practically cease. In addition, the solvent and hydrogen peroxide will also separate: at the bottom will be bromine, then a layer of solvent, and on top, aqueous peroxide. I don't know how well the operators imagined all this, but they decided not to do anything and wait until morning when the day shift and management would come, and they recorded everything in the logbook. The bromine supply, of course, was stopped.
At eight in the morning, the first shift and the workshop manager – that same Gil who used to sit with me in the same room – arrived. Hearing that the reactor had not been working for four hours, he was embarrassed and said he knew what to do - shown leadership.
- Guys, let's try to restart the agitator motor; maybe something just got stuck! – and he pressed the start button on the computer. The motor hummed, and the mixer shaft began to turn slowly: 5 revolutions per minute... 10... 15, and at that moment, a terrible explosion occurred. Fortunately, the reactor lid was immediately blown off, and most of the gas went upwards; the operator room was separated from the reactor room by a protective wall, and the people remained unharmed, but there was no way out of their room. Due to the released heat, the solvent in the reactor instantly vaporized, and everyone began to suffocate in the yellowish smoke. Someone broke a window, and all nine people jumped out onto the street from the second floor, but even this did not help – the poisonous gas cloud spread faster, covered them, and everyone lost consciousness.
But, as they say in Israel, a miracle is a ubiquitous thing: at the sound of the explosion, one of the workers from a neighboring workshop rushed out, quickly assessed the situation, put on a gas mask, and pulled all nine people out from under the gas cloud, one by one. It took him no more than five minutes. They called the fire department, and the ambulance, and the victims were sent to the hospital by helicopter. Everyone was saved, and the last injured person was discharged after two weeks.
***
Few days later , in our technological laboratory, under the guidance of my new boss, Miron, we conducted experimental modeling of the emergency situation: took a small glass reactor, poured in everything as required, saw how three layers of liquid formed, waited an hour, hid behind a concrete wall, and turned on the stirrer... 42 seconds later, the reactor exploded into pieces. That's exactly how much time passed before the explosion on the large reactor, and the experiment ended in great success. Conclusion: Bromine should indeed be added slowly. [content]
BROOMCHEMIE
Around end of 1995, my new boss, Miron, entered my room; by then, Damir had already left Brom. He told that a request had come from our subsidiary company, Broomchemie, in the Netherlands, asking for assistance in calculating the properties of certain substances. In Dutch, Broom means bromine, and they receive it from Israel, producing various brominated substances for the European market, avoiding the need for extensive transportation. Somehow, Broomchemie people learned that we had the ASPEN program, which could calculate the properties of components and their mixtures: boiling temperatures, densities, viscosities, and so on. Knowing these properties, the Dutch engineers would design a chemical process themselves – what kind, I didn't need to know yet.
The mixture wasn't anything exotic – water and six organic molecules – all known chemicals. Therefore, all the properties should be available in the ASPEN databank; I thought I could calculate everything for the Dutch colleagues in a few days. Indeed, the properties of individual substances were ready by lunchtime. I checked what I could against reference books – everything seemed fine. However, for the calculation of mixtures, this data was insufficient; what was needed were the so-called binary parameters, i.e., the interaction energies of each molecule with every other. Imagine a chess tournament where seven participants play in a round-robin system: how many games will they play in total? There's a simple formula from statistics, but I won't torture the reader and answer myself: 21 games. Therefore, I needed to obtain 21 parameters for my seven-component system. Fortunately, in chess, more than two people don't play, and when calculating mixtures with more than two components, it turns out that binary parameters are almost always sufficient.
Where do you get these parameters? – Right, from the ASPEN binary database. I checked there: data for fourteen pairs was available, but for the other seven pairs there were just zeros. No way, I thought, I won't finish in two days. To obtain these parameters, it was necessary to find experimental data in the literature and process them, and if that wasn't available, then conduct the corresponding experiments. Moreover, the data from the ASPEN database also needed verification.
Without delving into details, I spent about six to eight months collecting and verifying these properties. Miron didn't rush me, and the Dutch are patient people. Finally, I sent everything to the client. A response came from Broomchemie: “Thank you, but could you also solve the actual problem with this data? “ Either they didn't have time, or the specialist had left. The issue was that, in production, to purify one brominated product, they used propanol (also known as propyl alcohol), which they later separated from impurities in a particular column, purified, and reused. They were planning to make some changes to the process and add a wash of the crystalline product with another solvent – toluene, which would then mix with propanol and might affect the operation of the purification column.
The amount of toluene was minimal, only 200 grams per ton of the mixture, and initially, I thought that if it had any impact on the process, it would be insignificant. However, when I modeled the column and started the calculations, it turned out that it wasn't that simple: toluene accumulates in the column but plays a positive role, ultimately reducing the energy required for separation. It took me about five days to complete the work. I wrote a brief report and sent it Broomchemie, assuring them that toluene wouldn't cause any harm.
A few days later, Miron called me:
- Get ready to go to the Netherlands. They have doubts about your conclusions and want you to explain everything in person. It seems like there are some more tasks for you. B'atzlaha! (Good luck!) You'll see Europe in two weeks.
The Broomchemie plant is located in the southern part of the Netherlands, in the Zeeland region, in a small town called Terneuzen near the Belgian border. The best way to fly there is through Brussels, with Sabena Airlines. At the airport, I was greeted by Leif T, an engineer from Broomchemie, with whom we quickly became friends and still maintain a relationship to this day. The drive was about an hour, and during that time, I learned quite a bit about Leif. He was 35 years old, married to Doris, with a seven-year-old son named Otto. He had recently built his own house in a small town near the plant. He was responsible for producing several chemicals and implementing new technologies at the plant – I would be working with him. He also edited the factory newspaper, was a trade union committee member, and led weightlifting and badminton sections. When I told him I also played badminton, he was thrilled and said he would take me to the gym for training the following evening.
- Look, Dmitry, there was a turn to Sas-van-Gent on the right, where I live, and your hotel is.
- Oh... why didn't we turn?
- It is still only four o’clock! We're heading to the plant – everyone is waiting for you there, and we'll start working.
- Of course, - I replied with feigned enthusiasm, remembering that almost no one had approached me over the past six months working on Broomchemie properties. And here, lo and behold, they were waiting for me.
In fifteen minutes, we arrived at the Terneuzen plant. In the plant manager's office, Wim Hageman, there was also the chief technologist, Luc van Hayden, the head of analytics, Berenk, and the young head of the workshop, Ras. Leif introduced me, and at Wim's request, I presented my report.
- We assumed, - Wim said - that toluene would have a negative effect on separation. Additionally, the planned growth in production will require an increase in the capacity of the propanol regeneration unit. The French company QBE, which designed and built the current unit, claimed that productivity was at its upper limit and that we have to build a new column. Can you check the current process mode on your simulator and see what can be done in this regard? Leif will show you everything and tell you more details.
After that, we quickly looked at the drawings, and since it was getting dark, we went to see the column that rose in the middle of the factory like a spaceship preparing for launch, entwined with various pipelines. We climbed the spiral staircase to see the upper equipment: 27 meters – the height of a ten-story building. I tried not to fall behind, but competing with Leif in speed could only be done by a monkey trained to collect coconuts from a palm tree. From above, we had a fantastic view of the Schelda River, which spread several kilometers in those places. Around us, the fields of Zealand were laid out, intersected by narrow strips of canals, and to the east, in the haze, you could see the towers of the cathedrals of Antwerp. Right below us, Leif showed an area the size of a football field, densely packed with two-hundred-liter barrels on several levels.
- Here in our waste from the separation: a mixture of dipropyl ether and propyl bromide, which accumulates in the column and we periodically pump it into these barrels, - Leif explained. - Nobody knows what to do with them: they are very toxic, and no one wants to take to dispose them for any money.
The following day, Leif picked me up from the hotel, and by eight o'clock, I was already at work. The process model was ready back in Israel – I changed some parameters and started running variations, as they say. After lunch, I showed the results to Leif and reported everything to Hageman and the engineering team. If toluene is added, the column's performance can simply be increased by 15%, and another 15% if an additional evaporator is installed. Everyone liked the result, and Ras was tasked with ordering a new evaporator.
Finally, someone asked what I thought about the disposal of production waste accumulated in barrels, and then came my shining moment.
- As for waste recycling or disposal, I haven't thought about it yet, but in analyzing the column's operation, I found that the waste purge flow can be reduced by about ten times(!). Currently, dipropyl ether is removed from plate #8 with a concentration of only 5%. Around plate #24, the calculated concentration is 45–50% - tenfold higher, which means that the same amount of dipropyl ether can be deleted from the system by pumping ten times less material. - Here, it should be explained that special separating devices called plates are inside the column. There were 63 plates in this column, numbered from top to bottom, so the 8th was about five meters above the 24th.
- No way! - exclaimed Wim. - We need to check it.
- Of course," technologist van Hayden supported him. - We'll verify, but it can't be that French QBE made such a mistake. The column is not working now, but we were going to start it on Monday, so we'll check. Ras, is there a way to take samples from the twenty-fourth?
- And Dmitry will calculate the time from the column launch when the ether’s concentration reaches its maximum, - Leif added. Actually, I had already determined this time to be 40–50 hours and informed Leif about it before the meeting, but we decided to double-check the dynamic calculation.
Van Hayden and Ras inspected the column, and an order was immediately given to drill a hole around plate #24 and install a valve for sample collection. At this point, I was already amazed: at Israeli Brom, such a ‘project,’ along with discussions, would have taken a month and a half.
*
The next day, on Saturday, with Leif's participation, I double-checked all the calculations, and he took me to the sports hall to play badminton. With my first stroke, I broke his wooden racket, but then we found something sturdier. For an amateur, he played pretty well, and we won several doubles games against players of a higher level, which considerably lifted his spirits. He expressed the idea that when I came to Terneuzen, I would coach the factory team with him or even myself.
- Now, let's go to my place. Doris is waiting for us for lunch, - Leif announced, handing me the keys. - You drive, and I'll run; it's only 11 kilometers from here. - We arrived almost simultaneously. Leif introduced me to his wife and son and immediately started showing me the house where they had moved just a month ago.
- I designed the entire house project myself on AutoCAD. The builders just put up the walls and roof, and the rest Doris and I did ourselves: laid the floors, installed heating, gas, electricity, water, and sewerage, laid tiles, and plastered and painted everything. - The house has 17 rooms, four bathrooms, and three garages. - A few years later, traveling through Europe with my wife and children, we visited them, and my wife was as impressed as I was on the first visit and she called Leif a "Renaissance man."
- Why 17 rooms? - I asked, still in mild shock from what I saw and from hitting my head on the unexpectedly low ceiling beam above the stairs, which was caused by an AutoCAD error.
- That's exactly how many we need. Doris and I sat down first and counted everything - all the rooms are functional: a clean kitchen, a dirty kitchen, a pantry, a dining room, a living room, a music salon, my office, parents' bedroom, children's bedroom, LEGO room, room for the PICO railroad and trains, room for toy cars, a fitness room, and, of course, three guest rooms. I have six brothers and sisters, and Doris has seven.
- Yes, indeed, - I agreed, remembering our three-room apartment in Beer-Sheva, where we lived with three children. I don't remember lunch at all, but then we went down to the garden, to the left of which was a wooden pier with a 15-foot boat yacht in it.
- I intentionally chose a plot with water access – I love boats and yachts. A small canal starts here, connected to the main Terneuzen-Ghent canal, and from there, we sail into the Schelda River and then to the ocean. I'll retire, and Doris and I will travel. By the way, Leif is doing what he promised right now.
- But let me show you my main hobby – gardening. I have about ten thousand different plants, but I haven't yet planted all of them in the ground after moving. - We entered the greenhouse, and he started naming each little flower in Latin and English for me. - These, Mentha Nemorosa, I have four types, and there are six in the world, lacking the ones with white and blue flowers... - Looking at me, Leif suggested we go to his office, have some whiskey, and discuss plans for Sunday entertainment.
***
Ras fired up the propanol column at six in the morning on Monday. At 10 a.m., the technician took samples from the column to the analytical laboratory and soon returned with the results: Dipropyl ether on the 8th plate (the previous sampling point) - 1%, and on the 24th, there was nothing, as analysts say, "not detected."
By the end of the day shift, they took more samples. This time, ether appeared on the 24th, but only a tiny 0.2%. I was already nervous – could I have made a mistake (it had happened before), and I couldn't concentrate on anything. I ran the column simulation on ASPEN again; indeed, something was wrong. According to calculations, it should be 1.2% now, which is six times more.
The evening shift came. Leif was busy that evening, leaving me to my own devices. I walked around Sas-van-Ghent and reached the lock on the canal from which the town got its name, meaning "Lock on Ghent." Without passing this lock, you won't get to Ghent. I returned to my hotel, "Hotel Royal," renowned in the region for its restaurant, but it was only open on weekends. The owners, an elderly couple, awaited me in the lounge.
- Sir, we're going home; we will return at eight in the morning. You're staying alone. Please lock the door; don't open it for anyone. There's plenty of food in the fridge – feel free to help yourself. You can swim in the pool and use the sauna.
I made myself a couple of sandwiches and went to check the pool. I turned on the sauna and swam a bit - it wasn't heated yet. And then I saw a beautiful, polished coffin with an open lid. It turned out to be a tanning device: you turn on the ultraviolet lamp, lie down, close the lid, and tan! I had to try it. I set the timer for fifteen minutes, lay down, and almost dozed off.
The lamp went out. I decided to get out, but something happened to the lid – it won't open. I pressed harder – nothing. There must be a latch. There was total darkness. I groped with my hands – nothing, all smooth. I took a short break and made a few more attempts – unsuccessfully. I felt really sorry for myself: even if I survive until morning, when will the owners start looking for me? So, I won't know the plant trial results – maybe for the best... Time stood still... At some point, I decided to turn onto my stomach, and suddenly, the lid flipped open, but to my surprise, from the other side that I tried to open it! Apparently, I forgot which side I got in and pushed from the other side. I skipped the sauna that day.
Around one in the morning, Leif's call woke me up:
- On the 24th, the ether is 2.5%, and on the 8th, it's already 4%.
***
The daily morning plant meeting started at eight. Before Wim could ask about our trial, the head of the analytical laboratory, Berenk, called into the room to report that the analysis on the 24th showed 9.1%.
- Not bad, - Wim praised reservedly. - And how much did Dmitry expect?
- After 24 hours of operation, about 22%.
- Let's wait, but it is already twice as much as on the 8th.
The following sample was scheduled to be taken at 2 p.m. I went to my office to the computer, and after two, I returned to the control room. There was still no call from the analytics, but then Berenk appeared with a note in his hand: "Dipropyl ether - 29 percent!"
It was a victory. My stocks rose by a thousand percent and kept going up: 36% in the evening. At night, Leif woke me up again – 46%, and finally, the maximum in the morning: 53%. Continuing the experiment made no sense, as dipropyl ether began to enter the propanol product and contaminate it above the norm. It was time to start the purge from #24.
***
A few days later, I returned to Israel, where a thank-you letter from the director of Broomchemie awaited me, along with a prize of five hundred shekels.
In the following years, I visited the Terneuzen plant many times, working on various projects to improve old processes and develop new ones. Together with Leif, with minimal investments and changes, we increased the productivity of the propanol plant from 10 to 35 tons per day, as they say, "Had shown the French QBE up.”
I really liked the atmosphere at Broomchemie, which is now called corporate culture: trust in people and modeling results, neatness, minimal bureaucracy, and a general interest in results – the head of the analytical laboratory delivered the analysis results to the control room in person! And then, perhaps on the third visit, I asked Leif what he thought if I could work at their plant for a couple of years. He said it was a good idea; we needed to talk to Wim. But the result of the conversation disappointed me.
- You know, my friend, Wim Hageman said it doesn't make sense because we won't be able to keep you busy with regular work; you do things too quickly. You came for the first time and solved the toluene problem and the dipropyl ether waste issue in just a few days.
- Yes, but I spent eight months before that working on the properties and developing the process model. In essence, I came up with a ready solution!
- Unfortunately, my friend, it's too complex to explain to our management and yours in Beer-Sheva. Let's go to my place instead. Tomorrow is Doris's birthday, and as a gift, I bought her a new Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Can you help me roll it onto the kitchen table? It will be a surprise when she enters and sees it, won't it? [content]
© Dimus 2022, English translation 2024
Wow, amazing
Дима, спасибо за интереснейшие истории и погружение в овладение химическими понятиями (дальше понятий дело не сдвинулось: я ведь дилетант). Безумно интересно!
Great read!