🏭 Special chip gases

Good morning. The second story feels like a "if you build it they will come" sort of thing. Does anyone know if it's cheaper to make silane gases in certain regions? Silicon costs by region?

From the condenser:

· More PDH in China

· US-based semiconductor gases

· MOTD: butadiene

Another PDH unit just started up

Process technology company, Lummus Technology, and specialty chemical producer, Clariant, announced the start up of a new 900,000 ton per year propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit in Qingdao, China.

The background you need:

A couple of decades ago, the petrochemical industry sourced virtually all of its molecules from naphtha crackers. Then the US had its great big fracking boom and so a bunch of companies decided to build giant ethane crackers. The problem is that cracking ethane doesn't yield nearly as much propylene as cracking naphtha. So, to make up for that ratio imbalance, companies have started making propylene on purpose (instead of as a cracking co-product).

Propane on purpose?

The leading on-purpose propylene process is a combination of Lummus' process technology and Clariant's catalyst. The process just removes hydrogen from propane by applying a lot of heat and pressure. The resulting propylene is then used to make stuff like polypropylene, propylene oxide, acrylonitrile, epichlorohydrin, and plenty of other molecules.

Bigger picture:

The demand for propylene is still projected to increase at a rate that is disproportionate to you could make from an ethane steam cracker, but now we have a bunch of PDH plants throwing things off. It's not clear how many more we can build before the supply/demand situation flips—but we might be getting close. The overbuild and adjust thing is sort of habitual for the industry.

New chip gases are coming to the US

Japan's Showa Denko and South Korea's SK Group might build a high-purity gas plant for semiconductor manufacturing in the US.

Some context:

Making semiconductors is a very complex and lengthy process—so, for the sake of simplicity, just think of it as a repetitive process where layers are added and removed from a silicon base. All you really need to know is that some of those layers are added with gases (such as deposition) and some are removed with gases (such as etching).

Spelling it out:

Usually when you hear "high-purity gases" you should think of the air-based gases that companies like Air Liquide, Linde, and Air Product make (nitrogen, oxygen, argon). But these companies are talking about stuff like silane and dichlorosilane (for depositing silicon nitride) and fluoromethane (for etching away some of that silicon nitride).

Zooming out:

These gases aren't typically produced in the US because semiconductors aren't typically produced in the US (at least not close to the scale that it's done in Asia). But now that the US is trying to incentivize domestic production we’ve seen Samsung and Intel commit to building new sites. Now that there are guaranteed end-markets for these gases, Showa Denko and SK want to set up shop nearby. Doing so will reduce shipping concerns from a technical (product instability), cost (less transportation), and political (wars and plagues) point of view.

Some more headlines:

• The IEA thinks that global natural gas demand growth will slow in the coming years

• Wacker just opened a new silicones production site in India

• These two companies are planning to build some new PET recycling plants

• Shin-Etsu developed an antimicrobial/antiviral coating

• McKinsey did a little write-up on how chemicals are the future of refineries

Product of The Day:

Today's MOTD is the most important one yet: butadiene.

First isolated by a French chemist in 1863, interest in butadiene took off after this Russian chemist polymerized it into a material with rubber like properties in 1910. Today, the world produces roughly 18 million tons of the molecule each year. Pretty much all of that butadiene is a byproduct of the steam cracking of naphtha or ethane, although it can be produced by the dehydrogenation of n-butane.

The greatest single use of butadiene is in the production of various co-polymers such as SBR, SB Latex, ABS, and NBR. After those co-polymers, butadiene is mainly used to make polybutadiene (the main component of tires), neoprene, and chloroprene.

In short, butadiene is a critical intermediate to countless different materials we use every day. It's companies like LyondellBasell, Sinopec, BASF, and ExxonMobil that make sure there's enough of it to go around.

In case you're interested:

• Book: Admittedly, Perry's Handbook isn't cheap… but nobody has ever regretted buying this thing.*

• Podcast: Check out this episode on innovation in the chemical industry.

• Safety Moment: Chevron's Richmond Refinery caught fire in 2012—take a moment to learn why.

• Tip: Add Lustre to your browser so you can see price history and reviews before buying anything online.*

The bottoms:

All views represent those of the author not their employer.