TOGETHER WITH

Good morning. If anyone is familiar with ethylene acrylic acid please reach out!

From the condenser:

· SK Group's latest EAA expansion

· More vanadium production is coming

· MOTD: ethylene

SPECIALTY POLYMERS

More ethylene acrylic acid is coming

South Korean conglomerate, SK Group, has announced plans to build an ethylene acrylic acid (EAA) plant with Zhejiang Satellite Petrochemical in Lianyungang, China.

The basics you need:

EAA is probably most well known for its use as an adhesive in flexible packaging (e.g. meat and cheese packaging), or as the adhesive on aluminum foil, but this stuff has plenty of other applications. In any case, we make EAA via the polymerization of ethylene and acrylic acid, both of which trace their roots to oil and gas. (Ethylene is a steam cracker product, but acrylic acid is too, albeit indirectly—we make acrylic acid by oxidizing propylene, which is a steam cracker product.)

Okay, so what's going on here?

SK is investing pretty heavily in EAA. Just last fall they announced plans to build a $220 million 40,000 ton per year EAA plant with the same joint venture partner, and now they're doing it again (except this time it will cost $331 million and it will produce 50,000 tons per year). Both plants are expected to start up in 2025.

Taking a step back:

According to SK, over 80% of the global EAA supply is produced by four major large chemical companies (SK being one of them), and none of it is currently produced in China. So the dual-plant-investment in China probably reflects SK's confidence in EAA's ability to take some of China's adhesive market share, and not an indicator of growing global demand (otherwise they might have been inclined to expand EAA production at their existing sites in the US or Spain, which, by the way, they acquired from Dow Chemical in 2017.)

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BATTERY MATERIALS

A brand new vanadium market is opening up

Japanese petroleum company, Idemitsu, invested in a vanadium mine and electrolyte production plant in Julia Creek, Australia.

The context you need:

Most of the world's vanadium (about 85%) ends up as a minor ingredient in a bunch of different alloys for its strengthening and thermal stability effects. Outside of the world of metals, vanadium is most well known for its role in the production of sulfuric acid as a catalyst (in the form of vanadium pentoxide), but now a new application for vanadium is being created: vanadium-based redox flow batteries (VRFBs).

Okay, so what's up with VRFBs?

While lithium-ion batteries are great for compact applications where energy density and power matter a lot (like in electric vehicles), other applications (like grid-scale energy storage) give more weight to factors like scaling economics and maintenance cost. Generally speaking, flow batteries are a better fit for those grid-scale applications, and VRFBs are getting the most attention so far (partly because vanadium ions can exist in multiple oxidation states).

Connecting the dots:

The mine in northwestern Australia is digging up minerals with a high concentration of vanadium, processing it into vanadium pentoxide, and dissolving some of it in sulfuric acid to make the electrolyte for VRFBs. We're seeing similar investments being made in the US as well—but US Vanadium seems to be focused on sourcing their vanadium via spent catalyst instead.

Some more headlines

• Air Liquide is going to build an ammonia-cracking pilot plant at Antwerp

• KBR aquired an acetic acid production technology

• Indian Oil is investing $7 billion on a new cracker and derivatives complex in Paradip

• OQ Chemicals reduced its CO2 Emissions at its Bay City, Texas plant by 10%

• Air Products is withdrawing from a $2 billion gasification project

Molecule of The Day

Today's MOTD is the world famous, ethylene.

First discovered by this man in 1669, chemists have been playing with this molecule for quite some time. The term, olefin, has it's origin story in the fact that when ethylene is combined with chlorine it produces Dutch oil (which made ethylene an oil-making gas—or as they called it: olefiant gas).

The simplest alkene is also the most widely produced organic compound in the world, with a global production of roughly 200 million tons per year. About 60% of that becomes polyethylene (HDPE 28%, LLDPE 18%, LDPE 14%), 18% becomes ethylene oxide, 11% becomes EDC (that's Dutch oil), and 5% becomes ethyl benzene.

This flowchart paints a better picture.All of that ethylene is made in one of three ways—steam cracking ethane and propane, steam cracking naphtha, or catalytically cracking gas oil. The main companies doing the cracking are your huge petrochemical companies like ExxonMobil, Dow Chemical, SABIC, Ineos, and many more.

The reboiler

• Safety Moment: Read this article to learn how improving the ergonomics in a chemical plant can improve the safety in the workplace.

• Learn: The Column gets its name from the separation unit processes. Check out this course to learn why mass transfer operations are the core of the industry.*

• Company History: Ever wondered where all of these big oil companies came from? Read about how Rockefeller's company gave birth to them all.

The bottoms

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