Good morning. Hopefully everyone had a great 4th of July weekend! In case you missed it, a new Feedstockland post dropped on Monday—Big and Slow: Why Chemical Startups are Rare.

From the condenser:
· Cepsa’s bio-based IPA
· Ineos bought TotalEnergies out
· POTD: caulk

Cepsa is making IPA with green H2

Spanish petroleum company, Cepsa, announced plans to build an acetone to isopropyl alcohol (IPA) plant at its site in Huelva, Spain that will utilize green hydrogen.

The context you need:
You probably know isopropyl alcohol best for its role in rubbing alcohol, but besides its disinfecting capabilities, it’s also a practical solvent for non-polar compounds, so you’ll find it in a lot of different products sold by the cosmetics, personal care, pharmaceutical, paints, and coatings industries. For the most part we’ve made this stuff by reacting propylene with water since the 1920s, but in the last few decades we’ve seen some companies make it by reacting acetone (more on this below) with hydrogen.

Why that’s weird:
Making IPA from acetone is weird because most of the world’s acetone is made as a co-product alongside phenol, which we do by reacting benzene with propylene—which is the weird part: instead of hydrating propylene to make IPA, Cepsa is using propylene to make acetone, which they then use to make IPA. In other words, acetone is an unnecessary intermediate that makes economical sense because the demand for phenol subsidizes acetone production.

Connecting the dots:
Cepsa recently announced plans to use bio-based feedstocks at this complex to make renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel, which means that they’ll have some bio-based aromatics (such as benzene) free for use downstream. So as long as they combine the resulting acetone with green hydrogen to make IPA they’ll be the first to market a 100% sustainable version of IPA. It’s a great example of how market forces can outweigh the most technically rational, or truly sustainable route, by incentivizing companies to produce unnecessary molecules in the middle. (To be clear, this doesn’t mean Cepsa is doing something wrong, it’s really not their fault that phenol comes with a co-product, that’s a kinetics issue.)

Ineos is buying out TotalEnergies

UK-based chemical company, Ineos, is buying out French oil and gas major, TotalEnergies, from their 50/50 petrochemical joint ventures in Lavera, France.

A little background:
In case you’re not familiar, Ineos is an assembled chemical company. Its owner, Jim Ratcliffe, started piecing together a bunch of chemical businesses that the big guys didn't really want in the mid-1990s, and hasn’t really stoped since. Today the company is effectively “ICI and BP's old chemical businesses plus a bunch of other strap-ons”. (You can find a more detailed story if you glance through the company's timeline.)

Okay, so what’s the deal here?
The two companies have owned and operated a few different sites: a 720,000 ton per year naphtha steam cracker, a 300,000 ton per year polypropylene plant, and 270,000 ton per year aromatics site (which usually refers to some BTX and separations units). The companies have also jointly owned and operated an ethylene pipeline network that stretches from southern France (where Lavera is located) to northern France (here’s a map if you’re interested).

Zooming out:
That pipeline network connects this site to a couple of TotalEnergies and Ineos sites downstream, but apparently their joint venture has recently been selling all of that ethylene to Ineos (instead of splitting it 50/50). Their plan now is for Ineos to just own the assets since TotalEnergies doesn’t want to reap the benefits of vertical integration, and instead wants to supply its own site in northern France from another one of its sites (which is located in central France).

Some more headlines

• Shell just chose a new Executive Vice President for their chemicals business

• Borealis officially sold its nitrogen business

• Technip Energies acquired a smaller chemical process technology company

• Mitsui Chemicals started up its newly acquired flat panel display pellicle plant

• BASF announced a new version of its pore-tightening cosmetic ingredient

Product of The Day

Today, we're breaking down caulk.

If you're not familiar with caulking, we use this stuff to bridge the gap between two neighboring materials, limiting the passage of fluids and or heat. When you go to your local Home Depot or Lowes for caulk you'll be presented with more than a few options.

For most DIY projects, the way to go will be a water-based emulsion of latex (cis-polyisoprene) and acrylic (polymers made from acrylic acid, methacrylic acid, and or acrylate monomers) or vinyl (polymers made from vinyl chloride). You'll see all of those marketed as latex caulk. Alternatively, you'll find some heavier duty silicone (polysiloxane) and polyurethane caulks as well as combinations of all of the above.

The reboiler

• Article: Check out this cost analysis on which chemicals can feasibly be made with biobased feedstocks.

• 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.*

• Safety Moment: To protect equipment from the effects of high pressure, use this as a reference for your future work.

The bottoms

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