KeyAssociates
seeks special scientific & engineering projects
that routine analytical & engineering laboratories currently reject
for one reason or another. The firm maintains a staff of chemists,
engineers, and technologists with wide experience in technological problem
solving. Beginning in 1967 with perfecting
the solvent system for Liquid Paper®, we have successfully completed many
special projects.
In
1967, Bette Graham's company, Liquid
Paper, was located in an old house on Twin Hills Avenue
in Dallas, Texas. She had grown her company substantially from its
founding in the mid 1950s to 1967 based on a formulation that dried out
much too fast in the
bottle, thus wasting much of the product. Having received numerous
complaints, Bette hired the Key Group to solve this problem for her.
Bette, a fired secretary in 1956, sold
her company in 1979 for 47.5 million
dollars.
In 1968, Thuron Industries (see
Zoecon) in Dallas was making
a pet collar in competition with Shell by using Shell's Vapona
(Dichlorvos). In order to obtain Vapona, Thuron was forced to purchase
products containing Vapona from which to extract it for use in its flea
collars. Thuron hired The Key Group to
develop methods of extraction/purification of Vapona, which we
did.
In the 1970s, Drum Silver Corporation
in Norman, Oklahoma, needed a new non-cyanide process to remove silver
from photographic film. Robert Fields hired The
Key Group to solve this problem. A process
that worked using chlorine dioxide was developed and tested, but not
installed due to employee objections to the odor.
In the 1980s, the
high price of silver made recovery from (1) low-grade, extraction-amenable
ores and (2) ores of high in grade but difficult to extract created
interest in recovering silver from manganese-silver ores. A British
investment group hired KeyAssociates to solve this problem, which was
accomplished using a roasting step of the ores with salt.
Information on other special projects of
note is given in the Experience link.
Since the mid-1990s, KeyAssociates has
been working primarily in the environmental field. Now,
KeyAssociates has
re-kindled its interest in special project consulting on chemistry,
engineering, and other scientific and technological problems and is
searching for new challenges for the 21st Century. Our infrastructure is
organized to utilize our in-house and networking expertise to analyze and
define special problems, and
then provide clients with efficient technical
solutions.
If your company encounters a
technical problem that you lack the resources to solve, or that might have
your regular analytical and engineering sources baffled, or that might not
interest other consulting firms, please contact KeyAssociates. We
enjoy tackling difficult problems, and we are actively searching for such
interesting problems that require extraordinary focus
and special resources to
define and solve. Please call us…you’ll be glad you did.
References:
http://inventors.about.com/od/lstartinventions/a/liquid
paper.htm
http://www.aperon.com/company/overview.html
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