🏭 Fat BHETs

Good morning. The Column will be off next Monday for Memorial Day and back on Wednesday, June 1st. Enjoy the long weekend!

From the condenser:

· Wacker's silicone rubber expansion

· Depolymerizing PET to BHET

· MOTD: ethylene oxide

Wacker is gonna make more silicones

German silicones company, Wacker Chemie, is planning to increase production of its liquid silicone rubber (LSR) and high consistency rubber (HCR) globally.

The context you need:

LSR and HCR are the two main grades of silicone rubbers. Whether you make LSR or HCR depends on how you decide to cure a polysiloxane (aka silicone). The most common polysiloxane is polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). PDMS is made by the reaction of dimethyldichlorosilane and water. We make dimethyldichlorosilane by passing methyl chloride over some ground-up silicon (which is made by heating up sand).

Why the expansion?

While the largest market for silicone rubbers automotive market, ADI Analytics suggested that it's the demand from the medical, pharmaceutical, and construction (adhesives, sealants, and coatings) driving these investments. Plus, over the last decade, the global supply of chemicals like dimethyldichlorosilane has been reduced (plant shutdowns in China and this one in Germany).

Summing it up:

The market is short LSR and HCR so Wacker has laid out plans to continuously expand its production at all of their sites globally. We're seeing the other big players in silicones (Dow Chemical, Momentive, and Shin-Etsu) also make investments in this space. They need to build a lot of plants to keep up with demand and make up for recent shutdowns.

Depolymerizing PET to BHET instead

Japanese chemical company, Teijin, has announced the development of a new catalyst that can depolymerize polyethylene terephthalate (PET) to bis(2-Hydroxyethyl) terephthalate (BHET).

Setting the scene:

PET is the polymer we use to make polyester clothing and most of our packaging. Its widespread use is what earned it the recycling number one. We make PET by reacting ethylene glycol (made from ethylene, from steam crackers) with terephalic acid (PTA) or dimethyl terephalate (DMT). BHET is an intermediate in both of those reactions—meaning that it’s produced and consumed in the process of making PET.

Spelling it out:

That whole intermediate thing works similarly in reverse (depolymerization instead of polymerization). If you depolymerize completely you end up with the initial monomers: MEG and either PTA or DMT. But if you do it partially, you’d get a higher proportion of BHET. That’s what Teijin’s new catalyst is good at (apparently).

Bigger picture:

Depolymerizing waste PET takes energy, so as you might imagine, depolymerizing partially would use less energy (that would be a good thing). Unfortunately, going to BHET isn’t easy. Most of the folks working on PET depolymerization (such as Eastman and Carbios) are going all the way back to the initial monomers because those are the processes that are ready to scale.

Some more headlines:

• Shell officially sold those Russian businesses that we talked about

• Sumitomo Chemical just divested its share in an agriculture company

• Johnson Matthey and BP are providing the tech for Repsol and Aramco’s synthetic fuels plant

• Air Liquide started up a $250-million hydrogen plant near Las Vegas

• Tata Chemicals finished building an oxygen plant in India for the medical uses

Product of The Day:

Today's MOTD is a dear friend, ethylene oxide.

Occasionally used to accelerate the maturation of tobacco leaves, ethylene oxide (EO) was first reported in 1859 by this French chemist. The world uses quite a bit of the molecule, with a global production capacity of roughly 30 million tons.

EO can trace its commercial beginnings back to Germany during World War I as BASF produced it with the chlorohydrin process.

Quickly outperformed economically by Union Carbide's direct oxidation process in 1937, today basically all global production is based on oxidation. EO is a critical intermediate for tons of end products that we use everyday, but this pie chart sums it up its end markets pretty nicely.

Generally speaking, it's the same companies who make ethylene that make EO (think of Dow Chemical, SABIC, Sinopec, etc.). After that EO is made it doesn't travel very far before it's converted into something else (because it's difficult to transport).

In case you're interested:

• Podcast: Check out this episode on education, talent development, and diversity in the chemical industry.

• Tip: Check out CoinSnacks, a once-per-week newsletter designed to keep you up to date on crypto.*

• Book: You need to understand the forces behind the oil industry to understand the chemical industry. Daniel Yergin's The New Map does a great job breaking it down.*

• Guide: Take a look at this summary about the chemistry of bourbon.

The bottoms: