Good morning. If you're new here, welcome! Last week we summarized November, talked about Sasol's Ziegler alcohols unit return & PKN Orlen and Aramco's potential complex on Wednesday ($) and Trillium's Series A round & a formaldehyde expansion in Sweden on Friday ($)

From the condenser:

· Shell's sulfur for lithium extraction

· Air Products and green H2

· POTD: roller blade wheels

Ioneer is using Shell’s sulfur to extract lithium

Australian mining company, Ioneer, is going to buy sulfur from Shell for its upcoming lithium and boron mine.

Wait, what is Shell selling?

Sulfur probably isn’t the first thing to come to mind when you think of oil and gas, but since living organisms contain sulfur, and since crude oil comes from dead organisms, we find significant quantities of sulfur in crude oil. That sulfur, now in the form of hydrogen sulfide, has corrosive and catalyst-killing tendencies (sounds kinda sour!), so refiners remove it (via hydrodesulfurization) and purify it (via elemental sulfur recovery).

So, what’s the deal here?

Ioneer is looking to capitalize on a large lithium and boron deposit in western Nevada. In this case, that means digging up ore, crushing it, and extracting those elements with DuPont’s sulfuric-acid-driven process. The sulfuric acid used in that process will be generated on site by contacting sulfur (from Shell) with water and oxygen.

Bigger picture:

We’re seeing a lot of announcements in the lithium space because of the anticipated demand for electric vehicles, but this site’s boron twist makes it unique. Since the ore also enables boric acid production, that co-product (or by-product, depending on how you choose to look at it) effectively acts as a subsidy for lithium hydroxide production.

Air Products' newest largest green H2 plant

Industrial gases company, Air Products, and utilities company, AES, have announced plans to build an 80,000 ton per year green hydrogen plant northwest of Wichita Falls, Texas.

A little context:

Pretty much all of the world's hydrogen is made via syngas by steam reforming natural gas (in most places) or by gasifying coal (mostly in China). That hydrogen is typically utilized for its material value, so you'll see it removing sulfur from crude oil (which we just talked about) and in ammonia production (which is used to make fertilizer).

The details:

The proposed site is an order of magnitude larger than most of the other green hydrogen sites that we’ve talked about, and it comes with the bill. The $4 billion project is similar to Air Products’ planned site in Saudi Arabia, should start-up in 2027, and be powered entirely by wind and solar power.

Bigger picture:

For material applications, decarbonizing hydrogen (by producing it via water electrolysis) tends to only spark debate when it comes to cost and ability to scale. For fuel and energy storage applications, decarbonizing hydrogen is hotly debated. Air Products is planning to sell what it produces here into both material and fuel markets (heavy duty trucking in particular).

Some more headlines

• Metso Outotec is building a pilot plant to test a new hydrogen-based process for iron production

• Phillips 66 announced its 2023 capital allocations plans

• Rohmdecided to buy SABIC's functional forms business

• Air Liquide wants to divest its business in Trinidad and Tobago

• BASF is marketing bio-based automotive coatings in China with the mass balance approach

Product of The Day

Today, we're breaking down roller blade wheels.

The next time you find yourself in a pair of roller blades, try to remember that you're rolling on a polyurethane elastomer. All polyurethanes are the result of reacting an isocyanate (like TDI or MDI) with a polyol, but the industry's preferred polyols are polyether polyols such as PTMEG and PPG. If you want more background on polyurethanes check out the last time it was the MOTD.

The reboiler

• 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.*

• Article: North Carolina’s old lithium mines are being revived by vehicle electrification.

• Video: Shawn Esquivel broke down climate change really well. Check out his video here!

The bottoms

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