🏭 New magnesium source

Good morning. Today's first story was a new one for The Column. Magnesium production isn't something that comes up very often!

From the condenser:

· Magnesium from nickel waste

· Celanese's acquisition financing

· POTD: face masks

Making magnesium from nickel waste

Australian start-up, Latrobe Magnesium, has announced that Bechtel will be doing a feasibility study its potential 100,000 ton per year magnesium production site in Victoria, Australia.

A little history:

Up until the late 1990s, the US was the world's leading producer of magnesium. That's because Dow Chemical had pioneered the means to extract it from sea water via electrolysis with a little bit of lime (calcium oxide). Things changed in the early 21st century after China commercialized the Pidgeon process—a production method that crushes dolomite and ferrosilicon, throws them into a furnace, and distills magnesium metal (in the gaseous state) off the top.

So, what's the deal here?

Latrobe Magnesium has been talking about producing magnesium metal from waste sources like fly ash from coal power plants and ferronickel slag (FNS) from nickel production. Their process involves the hydrometallurgical extraction of the metal from FNS followed by thermal reduction. Making magnesium like this should produce about 3% as much CO2 as the dominant process today (the Pidgeon process).

Bigger picture:

Right now the largest driver for magnesium demand is to lightweight vehicles (the metal weights 1/3 as much as aluminum), and the largest driver for nickel demand (that's where the FNS comes from) is to make cathodes for lithium-ion batteries (for electric vehicles). So if Latrobe's process is feasible (from a cost and technical POV) we may have something worth noting here.

Celanese gets closer to spending $11 billion

US-based chemical company, Celanese, has secured $7.5 billion of the $11 billion needed to finance the acquisition of DuPont's Mobility & Materials (M&M) business.

Some context:

DuPont is selling 850 patents and 29 facilities associated with the production of nylons (PA66, PA6), specialty nylons (HPPA, LCPA, filaments), polyesters (PET and PBT), and elastomers (TPC and EAE). Those products raked in about $800 million in EBITDA last year (roughly 85% of its M&M profits). The remaining 15% that DuPont is hanging onto comes from its Auto Adhesives, Multibase, Tedlar (polyvinyl fluoride film), and Derlin (polyacetyl) product lines.

So, what's up with the financing?

Celanese isn't about to drop $11 billion in cash. The company will need to source $7.5 billion of those funds by selling some of its investment-grade bonds. Those bonds will mature at a bunch of different times with interest rates around 6%. The company also converted $2.5 billion into Euros given the currently favorable exchange and interest rates.

Zooming out:

It may seem like it's a done deal when two companies agree on an acquisition, but it's not that simple. Regulation and financing are often hurdles that take a year or so to jump through, so huge deals (like this one) will take a while to close (if they ever do). These two companies are hoping to close the deal by the end of this year.

Some more headlines:

• Honeywell Ventures is going to invest in Electric Hydrogen

• Dow Chemical is pushing for solvent-free adhesives in packaging

• Braskem signed an offtake agreement with Nexus Circular to buy its plastic waste based pyrolysis oil

• Neste, MAN, and Altens agreed to promote biofuels in France

• LyondellBasell si saying that Class 1 railroads are restricting shipments

Product of The Day:

Today, we're breaking down face masks.

Before COVID-19, face masks weren't all that relatable—but nowadays pretty much everyone can relate to having one of these things strapped to their face. Whether you're talking about the infamous blue masks or the N95s people went nuts over, almost all of these were made from polypropylene (PP) in some form or fashion.

Those blue masks are made of melt-blown PP (which we talked about in September 2020). The N95 masks are also made of melt-blown PP, but sandwiched between two layers of spun-bond PP. Next time a pandemic rolls around have your eye on Ascend's nylon-based mask that contains zinc ions. PP was the material of choice this go-around due to its low cost and ease of processability, but next time we may have other polymers ready to go.

In case you're interested:

• Podcast: Check out this episode about a BASF trainee working as a process engineer.

• Safety Moment: With winter coming, freezes at chemical plants are inevitable. Learn about how improper winterization can lead to process safety events.

• Product: Does measuring the pH of random liquids sound fun to you? If so, then try out this pH meter.*

• Tip: If you like this newsletter but want some non-chemical business news, look no further than Morning Brew.*

The bottoms:

All views represent those of the author not their employer.