Ozone Layer Gets Lemon Scent : Environment: A Hughes worker creates a citrus formula for cleaning circuit boards, eliminating a use of CFCs.

Like Newton, the apple and gravity, fruit once again has played a big role in a scientific discovery.

But instead of getting bopped like Sir Isaac on the noggin, Ray Turner reached into his refrigerator for a lemon and came away with a startling solution to one of the more daunting environmental problems facing mankind.

After a few false starts one evening at his La Habra home, the longtime Hughes Aircraft Co. employee cooked up a citrus-based substitute for chlorofluorocarbons, a widely used industrial chemical blamed for the erosion of Earth’s protective ozone layer.

“I have a great deal of respect now for my refrigerator,” said Turner, 62, a self-described “bumpkin.”

“I was determined to find a simple solution to a complex problem. And I figured that if it failed, I could at least mix flour with it and make cookies.”

Turner’s kitchen coup, backers say, should provide the defense electronics industry with a long-sought replacement for the chemical, prove a cheap and reliable alternative for other high-tech manufacturers--and put a healthy dent in the stubborn problem of ozone depletion.

In the months since his breakthrough, the avuncular aerospace manager and a team at Hughes have demonstrated that a simple brew of citrus juices and water can work as an industrial replacement for CFCs, the troublesome chemical used in the manufacture of most electronic circuit boards.

As officials at Hughes unveiled the discovery last week, the public spotlight finally shined on Turner, a native of Kansas City, Mo., who proved that sometimes there are low-tech answers to high-tech problems.

W. Scott Walker, a Hughes senior vice president and chief of the company’s Fullerton complex, called Turner “a delightful fellow” who likes to stay low profile and is nervous about all the attention.

“He approached it from a citizen’s view of the world,” Walker said. “He really wanted to do something about CFCs.”

Turner acknowledges flat-out that much of the motivation for his discovery stems from his love of the outdoors. The father of five grown children, he served for four decades as a Boy Scout troop leader, learning to cherish the landscape as he trekked with coveys of Scouts on camping trips.

“I have a deep appreciation for the environment,” Turner said during an interview in his cramped office deep inside the beehive-like Hughes Ground Systems Group complex in Fullerton. “I recognized we were polluting the ozone layer. I knew the direction the industry was traveling wasn’t one we should be continuing.”

Seated behind his desk in a blue lab coat, Turner hardly has the look of a noted inventor. He has no college degree and learned his trade on the job, through correspondence courses and at a junior college. A confessed workaholic, he has been with Hughes since 1969. Before that he worked with North American Rockwell on the Minuteman missile project.

But nothing has thrilled him quite like the citrus discovery, which came on a Friday night in November, 1989.

It had been a trying day. A regional air quality inspector had discovered a minor violation on a contraption containing CFCs, and Turner was troubled by the finding. During the drive home, he decided to take a crack at the impossible. He would come up with a replacement for CFCs.

The chemical, which is also used in automobile air conditioners, has been a prime ingredient since the 1950s in the manufacture of electronic circuit boards, the wafers that lace together transistors and other tiny components. To prepare the boards for soldering, compounds known as fluxes are used to clean off an oxidized film that covers metal. The CFCs remove the fluxes from the boards.

CFCs react in the stratosphere and eat a hole in the Earth’s ozone layer, the shield that safeguards the planet from ultraviolet radiation. The solar radiation can cause skin cancer and cataracts as well as unsettle the world’s ecosystems.

Turner decided he needed to find a natural, everyday ingredient for cleaning the boards. Thus, the need for CFCs would be eliminated. What better place to look, he figured, than in his refrigerator. He gazed at the various foods on the shelves, determined to run through every one to find a solution. Mayonnaise. Ketchup. It did not matter.

First he tried vinegar. Turner put a drop or two on a corroded penny and then fired up his soldering gun. It did not work. The solder would not stick, meaning that the vinegar had failed to clean off the film.

Next, his attention turned to a lemon. Turner ground up some peel and rubbed it on the penny with a spoon. Once again, the solder stood in a benign bubble, unable to grip the penny.

But then he used a drop of lemon juice, figuring its acidity would eat away just enough. The rest, as they say, is history.

“Bam! The solder flowed right out. I was jumping for joy,” Turner said. “I was soldering everything that wouldn’t move. My wife was beginning to wonder if I should be sentenced to Fairview (Hospital). She started to question my stability.”

John Reiss, the operations manager who shepherded development of the concept, said his colleague was proud, yet a bit sheepish when he brought the formula in to show it off.

“He was like a little boy. He said: ‘Look at what I have,’ ” Reiss said. “I was surprised how simple it was and how well it worked.”

In the months since, Turner and a team assembled by Hughes have worked diligently to perfect the technique, which is being used on several military projects. Turner also got a healthy bonus, which he used to buy a restored 1929 Chevrolet and some furniture for his wife.

Turner has gotten rave reviews over the prospects for his potion. For a time it was dubbed “Turner’s Crazy Flux,” but now has a far more deferential title: HF-1189 (for Hughes Formula, discovered November, 1989). His colleagues made up a coffee cup emblazoned with the formula’s label; it shows the Earth covered by the words “A World of Difference.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has called Turner’s brew “environmentally superior.” Although other firms have come up with new techniques to stop using CFCs, some of them citrus-based, Turner’s is the first to meet the Defense Department’s specifications for manufacturing military equipment.

It has also been hailed as a low-cost process that will improve the quality of products. Since it was introduced, it has reduced circuit board defects by 70% to 80% at Hughes.

“This was all just part of the job,” Turner said. “It’s our dedication to the environment that produced this. I’m happy for that.”

Times staff writer Marla Cone contributed to this story.