AGRICULTURE INDUSTRIAL SAFETY
CREDIT: SYNGENTA (SOYBEAN); SHUTTERSTOCK (WATER DROPS)
BASF blast impact lingers As investigators work to determine the cause of the deadly explosion that shook BASF’s headquarters complex on Oct. 17, chemical analysts are assessing the impact of the incident on the marketplace. The blast occurred among pipelines that connect the firm’s complex in Ludwigshafen, Germany, to its harbor on the Rhine River. Three people died, and eight were seriously injured. An investigative team found last week that a pipeline carrying flammable liquid had been cut with a cutting disc. Maintenance work involving a grinder was occurring on an adjacent pipeline. The company says a butylene mixture leaking out of the cut pipeline could have been ignited by sparks from the grinder. After the explosion, the two steam crackers at the heart of the Ludwigshafen complex were shut down, along with 22 other facilities. By Oct. 20, the company had begun to restart the crackers, which supply ethylene, propylene, and other raw materials to much of the rest of the complex. Still, the impact of the event is lingering. BASF declared force majeure on sales of acrylic monomers, plasticizers, and n-butyl acetate. Companies often invoke the declaration to release them from contractual obligations in the wake of an unforeseen circumstance. In an analysis of the incident, the consulting firm Tecnon OrbiChem notes that the Ludwigshafen site’s highly integrated nature— normally a competitive advantage for BASF—turns into a disadvantage when an unexpected outage at one facility creates a domino effect throughout the complex. Nonetheless, Tecnon says the marketplace repercussions are so far much less than initially feared.—MICHAEL MCCOY
Syngenta-ChemChina deal close slips ChemChina’s $43 billion deal to buy Syngenta will likely be delayed as the European Commission (EC) and other regulators deepen their scrutiny of the purchase and other transactions in seeds and agrochemicals. ChemChina and Syngenta have been planning on a close by the end of the year. On Syngenta’s quarterly earnings conference call last week, CEO J. Erik Fyrwald told analysts he sees regulatory scrutiny extending well into the first quarter of next year. With other large agrochemical deals looming, such as Bayer’s purchase of Monsanto and Dow Chemical’s merger with DuPont, regulators are worried that all the consolidation will hurt farmers. A deeper EC investigation of the Dow-DuPont deal, announced in August, will probably put off completion of that transaction until February 2017. And recent congressional hearings have focused on whether the wave of transactions will impede competition in agrochemicals. Compared with the other agrochemical deals, the merger between ChemChina and Syngenta, which would combine for about
Syngenta develops soybean seeds and treatments. $16.7 billion in agriculture-related sales, joins two firms that only moderately overlap. ChemChina’s Adama affiliate is a maker of generic crop protection chemicals. The companies reportedly haven’t submitted proposals to the EC to sell off assets to ease antitrust concerns, a possible sign that they expect a deeper probe of the deal. “ChemChina and Syngenta remain fully committed to the transaction and are confident of its closure,” Fyrwald told analysts. In fact, all the executives involved in agriculture deals say they are confident the deals will pass regulatory review relatively unscathed. By and large, they have been arguing that the combinations are good for innovation and crop productivity. They have also been pointing out that the merging companies aren’t usually competitors in the same subsectors of the seed and crop protection chemicals business.—ALEX TULLO
SUSTAINABILITY
XPrize seeks water from the air The XPrize Foundation, a nonprofit that hosts public competitions to promote new technologies, has launched a new venture in which it will award $1.75 million to the developer of a system for harvesting water from the atmosphere. The Water Abundance XPrize, which is sponsored by Tata Group and Australian XPrize prizes Aid, hopes to identify renewable an energy-efficient energy. means of alleviating the global water crisis. It is challenging teams from around the world to create a device that extracts a minimum of 2,000 L of water a day from the atmosphere using 100% renewable energy, at a cost of no more than 2 cents per L. “Globally, we are dealing with the twin problem of scarcity and distribution of usable water,” says Gopichand Katragadda, chief technology officer for Tata, adding
that only 2.5% of all the water on Earth is freshwater. The prize is expected to be awarded in 2018. XPrize awarded its first prize in 2005 for suborbital spaceflight. Last year, it launched a $20 million competition for technologies that convert carbon dioxide to high-value products. The water prize was announced at a United Nations Day reception in New Delhi last week in conjunction with a competition focused on women’s safety. Barry Liner, director of the Water Science & Engineering center at the Water Environment Federation, says dehumidification technologies have been deployed to extract water from the atmosphere, but at lower quantities and at a higher cost than prescribed in the XPrize challenge. He points to a project called Regatta H20 that deployed 44 large sails to harvest water from fog off the coast of Santa Monica, Calif., winning a local prize called the Land Art Generator Initiative.—RICK MULLIN OCTOBER 31, 2016 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
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