🏭 Dutch State Mines

Good morning. Hope everyone had a nice long weekend!

From the condenser:

· Royal DSM's $4B divestment

· BASF's water-blown polyurethanes

· POTD: orthopedic casts

Royal DSM's big divestment

Dutch chemical company, Royal DSM, has announced plans to divest its Engineered Materials business for $4.0 billion to Lanxess and Advent International.

Catching you up:

DSM started out as a state-owned mining company in 1902 (DSM stands for Dutch State Mines), diversified into petrochemicals by the time their last coal mine closed in 1973, and then sold that petrochemical business to SABIC in 2002. Since then, the company has leaned into its specialty materials, nutrition, and health businesses (for those last two, think about vitamins, enzymes, yeast extracts, and flavorings). Then, last fall, DSM announced plans to divest their specialty material businesses. They sold about half of it to Avient about a month ago.

So, what's the deal?

The rumors were true. The plan is for Lanxess (a German specialty chemical manufacturer) and Advent (a private equity firm) to jointly acquire DSM's Engineering Materials business and toss it into a new joint venture (JV). The JV will combine DSM's operations in polyamides (PA6, PA66, PA46, PA410), specialty polyesters, and polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) with Lanxess' operations in PA6, polybutylene terephthalate (PBT), and thermoplastic fiber composites.

Zooming out:

These polymers aren't your standard thermoplastics like PP, HDPE, and LDPE. These polymers handle thermal, chemical, and physical stress very well (which is why they are at the top of the polymer pyramid). Lanxess and Advent are interested in them because the automotive industry is driving demand for their use in electronics. DSM probably just wanted to shed the business so that it would be a better fit for Firmenich (a $21 billion merger).

BASF is making foams with water instead

German chemical giant, BASF, has announced that its new water-blown polyurethane rigid foam is being used by a bus manufacturer.

Foam for what?

We're talking about spraying the inside of metal bus walls with an insulating foam. Just like how better insulating your home reduces your energy bill, insulating busses reduces energy requirements for heating and cooling. Polyurethane foams are great for this because they can be easily sprayed onto the surface in a scalable manufacturing process.

The context you need:

We make polyurethanes by reacting isocyanates (frequently MDI or TDI) and polyols (such as MEG). We do this with the help of catalysts, surfactants, flame retardants, and blowing agents. All of these variables effect the end properties of the resulting foams—for example, the fire resistance of a foam is related to density of the foam, which can be controlled by the blowing agent (and, of course, by a flame retardant).

So, what's the deal here?

We typically use hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) or pentane as the blowing agent for these foams. Those chemicals work well, but they present sustainability (ozone depletion and GHGs) and safety (VOC) issues. The struggle with using water as the blowing agent is that it produces higher density foams that fail fire resistance requirements. BASF seems to have incorporated a new flame retardant that compensates for the density issue.

Some more headlines:

• Haldor Topsoe is providing the tech for a small renewable diesel and SAF site in Canada

• Neste and Circularise are working on a digital supply chain tracking system

• Nippon Shokubai and Arkema are making electrolyte salts for lithium-ion batteries

• LG Chem and B&M are planning to for a JV for cathode materials

• Saint-Gobain is divesting their glass-processing businesses in Austria and Germany

Product of The Day:

Today, we're breaking down orthopedic casts.

If you haven't had one of these then you've at least signed one, but either way, understanding what they are made of probably hasn't been your top priority. Since they are flexible when they are wrapped and harden when soaked in water, you'd be right to imagine that there's some sort of thermoset resin action going on here.

The material casts are made of is a knitted fiber soaked with a polyisocyanate prepolymer. The fiber is typically fiberglass (long strands of glass surrounded by a polymer) or a polyester like PET. The polyisocyanate prepolymer is a usually a polyether polyol (like this polypropylene glycol from Covestro) with MDI end caps. When this stuff hits water it cures (forms crosslinks) and become the rigid polyurethane that protects your (or someone else's) healing bones.

In case you're interested:

• Book: Admittedly, Perry's Handbook isn't cheap, but it's got everything you'd need to know about chemical processing inside.

• Guide: If you’ve been looking for a breakdown of biobased fuels, then look no further.

• Infographic: Take a look at the molecules that make trash smell bad.

The bottoms:

You made it to the bottoms, so please enjoy this piece of an old Exxon ad as your reward. Check out Exxon's full "put a tiger in your tank" commercial here.