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The Bromine Chokepoint

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Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#131

Post by mbreese »

adrian_b wrote: post #124
mbreese wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which can be done in few places At the moment. We could purify bromine gas anywhere and extraction and purification don’t need to be co-located. But at the moment, the purification and extraction in Israel are co-located, which is why this is more of an immediate risk than a long term one. However, it does take time to get new production online and no one will spend the capital to build a new purification facility…

That is exactly the conclusion of TFA, that in order to avoid such risks purification plants should also be built in other places, including in USA where the local producers of bromine can provide the raw material. However, the construction of such a purification plant can take years, so TFA argues that it should be done ASAP, instead of waiting for some catastrophe that would destroy the existing plants, when this w…

That’s not the issue. Someone could build the plant domestically (US), sure. It would take time, but getting a plant build isn’t hard. But who would do that? If the plant isn’t financially stable during non-crisis situations, then it won’t get built without subsidies. A plant that can’t offer a competitive price will never be used during “normal” times, so it becomes financially untenable.

We had the same issue with PPE manufacturing during Covid. We lack production capacity locally (US) because it’s normally cheaper to source from outside suppliers. When we try to build that capacity locally, it fails in the marketplace as soon as the crisis is over and the company is left with an expensive unused factory.

The hard part isn’t building a new plant. It is the commitment to ongoing support for maintaining a diverse supply chain that is more robust to geopolitical disruptions. We are not good at factoring risk into pricing, so we only accept the cheapest prices, to the detriment of a robust supply chain.

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#132

Post by adrian_b »

brominebrewer wrote: post #126
adrian_b wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lot of confused comments in this thread. TFA is not about ordinary bromine used in the chemical industry, which is extremely cheap and easily available everywhere. TFA is about semiconductor-grade pure bromine, which, like all chemical substances used in the semiconductor industry is very expensive and it is not produced by most bromine producers. Nobody in this thread has pointed to any evidence that USA p…

You're all over this comment thread spreading your speculation as fact. Semiconductor-manufacturing grade bromine (specifically anhydrous hydrogen bromide) is, in fact, made in the US.

You may be right but it would have been nice to name the company that produces it.

The USGS article pointed by others contains absolutely no information about a US producer.

The parent article lists at least 3 US producers of ordinary bromine, but it claims that none of them produces semiconductor-grade pure HBr and the conclusion of the parent article is that someone should build in USA a purification plant, to avoid risks.

Perhaps TFA is wrong and there exists a US supplier, though even if that were true it is unknown whether it could increase its production if a shortage happened.

If you know information that contradicts the parent article, you should provide it, i.e. by naming the company.

In general any company benefits when more people know what it produces, so I cannot believe that you are bound by any confidentiality constraint to not name the producer, when you know it.

I have replied in many places in this thread because all the comments were wrong. This is no speculation. I have worked in semiconductor manufacturing and I know perfectly well the difference between semiconductor-grade pure substances and the ordinary chemical substances, while all those comments are wrong, by confusing these things.

Nothing that I said is speculation or wrong, because I have just pointed that those comments state conclusions that do not follow from their premises. The fact that USA produces ordinary bromine is no evidence that it produces semiconductor-grade pure bromine.

If you are right, that does not invalidate anything that I have said. It invalidates only the parent article, which concludes that a purification plant should be built in USA, while you say that such a plant already exists.

If you are right, you should name it.

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#133

Post by brohee »

brohee wrote: post #112
CamperBob2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What eventually happened with the neon crunch? Those cities are still under Russian control, correct?

Odesa is not and has been hit less than more Eastern cities. OTOH I'd assume Ingas in Mariupol ceased to exist for practical purposes.

Actually, Ingas the company very much survived and moved to the Odesa region (https://ingas.ua/en/pro-nas/).

And they still have Neon in their catalog so most likely another case of impressive Ukrainian resilience.

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#134

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

Animats wrote: post #31

No, there isn't likely to be a bromine shortage. The US is a major producer of bromine.[1] It's not at all rare. It's just that the cheapest source is the Dead Sea, because that's concentrated brine. There are bromine wells in Arkansas. It's a by-product from some oil wells. It's in seawater. In California alone, the Salton Sea and the SF salt evaporator ponds are potential sources. If the price goes up, the use of b…

Great Lakes Chemicals (Chemtura) extracts 40 million pounds of bromine in Arkansas (Smackover Formation) annually. The Dead Sea (Israel) has approximately 1 billion tons still in the water. There's around 100 trillion tons in the oceans.

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#135

Post by mmooss »

karlgkk wrote: post #94
mmooss wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says it would be difficult to ramp up other production. What is your claim based on?

As far as day-to-day production goes, it’s not a terribly complicated process. I’m not going to say it’s easy, but it’s not hard (in the grand scheme of this industry). Anyways, with that out of the way: Quote me where I talked about difficulty of bringup (layperson: “ramping up”) production. (I’m assuming that that is the “claim” that you think I made that you are referring to. If it’s not, please enlighten me.) Unl…

> Quote me where I talked about difficulty of bringup (layperson: “ramping up”) production.

In your GGP comment you wrote, "Making it isn’t hard. The issue is that it’s such a low margin product that anyone spinning up a facility will not see any decent ROI."

IMHO that means that "spinning up a facility" is relatively easy; the reason it doesn't happen is ROI.

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#136

Post by karlgkk »

mmooss wrote: post #135
karlgkk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as day-to-day production goes, it’s not a terribly complicated process. I’m not going to say it’s easy, but it’s not hard (in the grand scheme of this industry). Anyways, with that out of the way: Quote me where I talked about difficulty of bringup (layperson: “ramping up”) production. (I’m assuming that that is the “claim” that you think I made that you are referring to. If it’s not, please enlighten me.) Unl…

> Quote me where I talked about difficulty of bringup (layperson: “ramping up”) production. In your GGP comment you wrote, "Making it isn’t hard. The issue is that it’s such a low margin product that anyone spinning up a facility will not see any decent ROI." IMHO that means that "spinning up a facility" is relatively easy; the reason it doesn't happen is ROI.

> IMHO that means that "spinning up a facility" is relatively easy;

Well it's not, and I never said it was. So, you're reading into things that aren't there, sorry.

> the reason it doesn't happen is ROI

Yes, that's what I said. You are making up disagreements in your head when we are aligned.

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#137

Post by cramsession »

Pay08 wrote: post #100
cramsession wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not apparent on first read but I do think he's referring to the US and Israeli governments.

I'm pretty sure that's why the above comment said he needs to look in a mirror.

If he's correctly calling out our government, than he is looking in the mirror no?

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#138

Post by nandomrumber »

toss1 wrote: post #83
zasz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clicked through on the link that the article said showed that bromine was impossible to recycle. The abstract says "Here we propose a catalytic strategy that enables the selective and mild-condition conversion of all organobromides present in wastes into renewed bromides for Br recycling. It employs Ullmann-type reactions enabled by inexpensive Cu(I), simple ligands and hydroxides in DMSO–H2O solvent. This strategy…

You overlook the "long time" in your last sentence. Of course any of these problems can be solved in a long time, 5-10 years. The article is talking about the problems of between potentially supply being shut off tomorrow and being fixed in "a long time". Not good times.

There is no difference between now and before this war started.

Israel’s enemies have been launching missiles in to Israel for decades.

Why is only now a problem?

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#139

Post by nandomrumber »

littlestymaar wrote: post #7

The more efficient a system is (due to specialization and removal of redundancy), the more fragile it becomes. That's why biological systems look so wasteful (chlorophyll reflecting the more abundant wavelength, etc.)

What do you mean?

There’s more green light from sun light at the surface of the Earth than the red or blue.

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#140

Post by mmooss »

karlgkk wrote: post #136
mmooss wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quote me where I talked about difficulty of bringup (layperson: “ramping up”) production. In your GGP comment you wrote, "Making it isn’t hard. The issue is that it’s such a low margin product that anyone spinning up a facility will not see any decent ROI." IMHO that means that "spinning up a facility" is relatively easy; the reason it doesn't happen is ROI.

> IMHO that means that "spinning up a facility" is relatively easy; Well it's not, and I never said it was. So, you're reading into things that aren't there, sorry. > the reason it doesn't happen is ROI Yes, that's what I said. You are making up disagreements in your head when we are aligned.

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