Report of visit of Dr. L.C. Matsch, March 11 and 12, including discussion at meeting at the C Reactor conference room

Dr. Matsch was born in Hungary and studied at Vienna Technical Institute, receiving degrees in physics and engineering. At the end of World War II, he was operating a krypton gas separation plant in Hungary, but left his home and personal effects and fled to Munich, Bavaria with his wife and infant son as the Russians entered the country. After the war he worked for a time with the German Linde Company and eventually came to the United States when an immigration quota was available for displaced Hungarian citizens. He went to work for the Linde Division of Union Carbide in an engineering capacity upon his arrival in the US, and he and his wife are now US citizens. He is currently Manager of the Engineering Development Division of the Linde Co., employing about 600 people including 200 engineers. His responsibilities include the design and construction of gas separation equipment and devices, improvement of their processes and economic analyses of the results. It was his group which developed the new improved distillation columns which have permitted extraordinary increases in through-put and efficiency in air separation plants, and which he would use in any purification system that he would design for more » Hanford. The important point to be emphasized in relation to the previous proposal for gas purification is that this break-through in distillation technology will now permit the almost complete removal of the last 500 parts per million of Argon to a new low level of less than 20 parts per million. « less