🏭 The Column: November 1, 2024

Good morning. Today we’re talking a bit about the evolution of caustic soda production, some lithium extraction developments in the U.S., and Metso’s attempt to rid the world of blast furnaces for iron production. Also: special shoutout to S&P Global for sponsoring today’s newsletter, and all future editions of The Column through March (that’s when the World Petrochemical Conference will take place in Houston—more details below!).

Things Happened:

Even more electric caustic soda

We started making sodium hydroxide, aka caustic soda, via the Leblanc process in the late 18th century primarily for use in soap and textile manufacturing. Dow Chemical later pioneered a new technology—brine electrolysis—at the turn of the 20th century, which introduced the first process capable of making copious amounts of chlorine alongside that caustic. Chlorine ended up becoming the primary product (shoutout to bleach, and later PVC), and caustic became the commoditized co-product. Brine electrolysis, aka the chloralkali process, is still the dominant production method for chlorine and caustic today, and is the prototypical example of how electrochemical production is capable of great scale (we make 100,000 KTA of caustic soda per year). But even though the primary reaction is electrochemical, that caustic pops out of the reactor at a roughly 30% concentration, and since we hate shipping water we typically heat it with natural gas to evaporate the water to get us to at least a 50% concentration. Nobian and Adven are exploring an alternative heating method: using a heat pump. I’m team heat pump and electric boiler, so I’m all for it. (Here’s a deeper dive on the industrial heat situation we’ve found ourselves in.) [LINK]

SWA Lithium keeps moving forward

Standard Lithium (SL) has had their eyes on the Smackover Formation for quite some time, and was initially working with Lanxess on ways to extract lithium out of their tail brine (Lanxess is out there for the Smackover’s bromine content). Lanxess eventually backed out, so SL spiraled into financial uncertainty for a few months before finding a new investor: Equinor. This is Equinor’s vibe to a tee. (The state-owned Norwegian oil and gas giant is well known for investing in renewable technology.) The two companies formed a JV called SWA Lithium, and they now intend on becoming the first to commercialize direct lithium extraction (DLE) in the Smackover Formation. Of course, Exxon is also interested in mining and DLE in the Smackover, and now the U.S. Department of the Interior is saying the formation has at least 9x more lithium than the U.S. will need by 2030. And the U.S. DOE handed out another conditional loan (like those we talked about last week) for extracting lithium in a totally different source in Nevada. [LINK]

Getting closer to cleaner iron

About 95% of the world's iron is made by blasting hot air over a mixture of coke, limestone, and iron ore inside of a furnace. That hot air, which was initially pre-heated by some other means, combusts the coke, releasing heat (to keep the reaction going) and some carbon monoxide. That carbon monoxide removes the oxygen from the ore, reducing it to CO2 (which is emitted), and leaves pig iron behind (the limestone just acts as a flux). The pig iron is then purified and used to make steel or other forms of iron. But this isn’t the only way it can be done—you can also reduce that iron ore directly with syngas (a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide). That process is called the direct reduction of iron (DRI) and Metso is driving its commercialization. To reduce switching costs and accelerate adoption, they’ve launched a new pilot facility for customer testing (presumably so today’s blast furnace users can validate that their feedstock will work with Metso’s process). [LINK]

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Other Things Happened:

A new 450 KTA polypropylene plant using Grace’s technology just started up in India. Ineos is closing its ABS plant in Ohio. Braven and CP Chem signed a long term feedstock agreement for plastic-based pyrolysis oil. BASF just opened a new 60 KTA 2-ethylhexanoic acid plant in Malaysia. Invista plans on continuing to produce HMDA at its site in Orange, Texas despite market turbulence.