🏭 The Column: February 13, 2026

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Good morning. Thanks to everyone who reached out about joining us at Solugen (we’re hiring)—I know I haven’t replied to everyone yet, but I will shortly.

Lithium from the oilfield’s produced water

Just a couple of month’s ago, we saw LibertyStream’s 10 ton per year direct lithium extraction (DLE) unit working as expected. Today, the startup announced an agreement with Select Water Solutions (an oilfield water recycler and disposer) to build a 1,000 ton per year site at one of Select’s sites outside of Midland, Texas. I want to pause here: this is not the same “DLE” that we talked about last week, and it’s not the same as what Exxon is talking about doing. Those guys want to drill for lithium-containing brine trapped in carbonate formations—which means that they need to put up the capital to drill and build the entire water processing infrastructure before attempting to extract any lithium. But Select already owns water processing infrastructure and is already being paid to process water, so strapping on a LibertyStream lithium extraction unit in exchange for a royalty is a cheap option for Select: they keep getting paid to process water regardless, and if lithium economics hold up, they pick up incremental upside without having to drill a single well. [LINK]

Synthomer wants bio-based butanol

UK-based polymer binder producer, Synthomer, announced that they’re forming a partnership with Godavari Biorefineries to commercialize bio-based butyl acrylate, which Synthomer would make from Godavari’s bio-based butanol. Nothing crazy is going on here, it’s just nice to see that despite the sustainability trend that seems to be waning, things are still happening. I’m not sure what is ultimately driving this: how much of it is push from Godavari (who recently licensed Catalyxx’s new ethanol-to-butanol process technology) versus pull from Synthomer’s end customers? Or is Godavari’s bio-based butanol cheap enough that Synthomer can eat the green premium (or at least part of it) in exchange for growth? At the end of the day, Synthomer sells binders that are part of final formulations, so they can only do so much to make their customer’s final product bio-based. [LINK]

Converting more uranium in the US

Honeywell spinout, Solstice Advanced Materials, just announced that they’ll be expanding their site in Metropolis, Illinois to convert 20% more yellow cake (that’s mined U₃O₈) into uranium hexafluoride (UF₆). This makes sense: the US is interested in securing critical supply chains (which includes nuclear fuel) and this site in Illinois is the US’s only uranium hexafluoride conversion facility. I’m pretty sure that uranium hexafluoride is sold in gas cylinders to enrichment sites like Urenco’s in New Mexico, who then sell it to someone like Westinghouse who will convert it into uranium dioxide powder, which is pressed and sintered into hard fuel pellets for nuclear reactors—but if you’re more familiar with nuclear supply chains and want to fill me in, let me know! [LINK]

Vibe code with your voice

Vibe code by voice. Wispr Flow lets you dictate prompts, PRDs, bug reproductions, and code review notes directly in Cursor, Warp, or your editor of choice. Speak instructions and Flow will auto-tag file names, preserve variable names and inline identifiers, and format lists and steps for immediate pasting into GitHub, Jira, or Docs. That means less retyping, fewer copy and paste errors, and faster triage. Use voice to dictate prompts and directions inside Cursor or Warp and get developer-ready text with file name recognition and variable recognition built in. For deeper context and examples, see our Vibe Coding article on wisprflow.ai. Try Wispr Flow for engineers.

Try Wispr Flow

Other Things Happened:

Suez is looking to convert sewage sludge into biochar. BASF declared a force majeure on several Oxo-C4 products from the winter storm. Evonik is expanding its hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) capacity. The EU is expanding its recycling definition to include chemical recycling. India is getting another hydrofluoroolefin plant. Invista is building a demonstration-scale nylon 66 recycling plant. Aduro’s hydrochemolytic recycling pilot plant started up. Gurjarat Fluorochemicals is building a battery materials plant in Oman. Hydrite is expanding its site in South Carolina. Nextchem is launching a new process technology for making polytetramethylene ether glycol (PTMEG). Kemira is acquiring a coagulant manufacturer in Germany.