business
Soda ash planned with new process The U.S. soda ash industry has already gone through one evolution—from making a synthetic product to mining a "natural" one. Now, a new company is betting that another evolutionary change is afoot The Solvay process for synthetic soda ash production, in which limestone and salt are combined in a multistep reaction to yield soda ash (sodium carbonate) and calcium chloride, was the basis for some of the earliest large-volume industrial chemical plants. Solvay plants dominated world soda ash production from the turn of the century until the late 1940s. Then, the discovery in Wyoming of a unique sodium carbonate-rich ore called trona set off a series of investments in trona-based soda ash plants. By 1986, synthetic soda ash production had ended in the U.S. Newcomer American Soda now says it will start construction in four months on a major soda ash plant based on yet another feedstock—nahcolite, a natural sodium bicarbonate found in deposits in Colorado's Piceance Creek Basin. By Jan. 1, 2001, American Soda expects to be mining more than 1.4 million tons of nahcolite per year and converting it into 1 million tons of soda ash and 150,000 tons of pharmaceutical-quality sodium bicarbonate. Nahcolite-based soda ash has been a dream of geologist Irv Nielsen since 1964, when he discovered the deposits while searching for oil shale in the region. A year and a half ago, Nielsen's dream began to take shape when he lined upfinancialsupport from Williams Cos., aTulsa-based energy and telecommunications firm with natural gas pipelines in the Piceance Creek region. American Soda, a joint venture held 60% by Williams Cos. and 40% by Nielsen's firm, American Alkali of Glenwood Springs, Colo., was formed. Mark B. Taylor, vice president of sales and marketing at American Soda, predicts the company's production costs will be "substantially below" even the lowest cost Green River, Wyo., soda ash operations. The key, he says, is that American Soda will "solution mine" nahcolite by injecting hot water into the deposits, bringing the solution to the surface, and stripping off carbon dioxide. The resulting sodium carbonate slurry is then 28
MARCH 15,1999 C&EN
pipelined 42 miles to a processing facili- I ago. But he says American Soda will ty where water is driven off to yield soda avoid IMC's mistakes by using hotter ash; some of it will be converted back to water and higher pressure, and by dissodium bicarbonate with the previously solving deeper nahcolite deposits. With Williams'financialclout behind removed C0 2 . In contrast, most Green River trona the $225 million-plus project, Taylor is mined using conventional, labor- says the last hurdle is winning permits intensive, underground techniques. As from federal and local authorities. For a result, Taylor claims that American that, six outside experts are working full Soda's labor costs will be a third of time for American Soda, and Taylor is confident that permits will be in place in Green River's. time for construction to start in June. Since 1996, FMC Corp. has been usThe U.S. soda ash business is in a ing solution mining to produce about 700,000 tons of Green River soda ash state of flux today. FMC is in the proper year out of its 3.5 million-ton total ca- cess of purchasing Elf Atochem's Tg pacity. Still, Taylor expects Colorado Soda Ash unit; a venture-capital unit of nahcolite's purity advantage over Wyo- Citigroup is buying IMC Chemicals; ming trona will give his operation the and General Chemical is splitting off its soda ash and calcium chloride unit. edge. American Soda won't be the first Meanwhile, total U.S. production was company to pull nahcolite from the down 600,000 tons last year because of ground: A plant owned by IMC Chemi- lower Asian and Latin American demand. It seems a risky time to be entering cals, Taylor's former employer, has been producing sodium bicarbonate, the business, but Taylor is looking furbut not soda ash, on land adjacent to ther out. "I think there could be a sea change in the way people produce soda American Soda's since 1992. Taylor concedes that the IMC opera- ash going into the 21st century," he tion has had its share of ups and downs, says. Michael McCoy including a mine collapse a few years I
Chemical productivity declines
Chemical productivity ck Factors that hurt the U.S. chemical industry's bottom line in 1998 include poor pricing, declining shipment volumes, a drop in imports and subsequent decline in the industry's much-heralded trade surplus, and lower capacity utilization. Now two more can be added. Labor productivity fell for the first time since the recession year of 1982, and the wage cost of labor to produce chemicals soared. Using production data from the Federal Reserve Board and employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, C&EN estimates that chemical productivity declined 1.1% last year to an index of 112.6 (all indexes are 1992 = 100). Productivity is output per hour calculated by dividing the index for production by the index of aggregate workhours of production. The government's workhour index factors in the number of production employees and the number of hours they work per week. The decline in productivity last year came after an unusually high increase of 5.1% the year before. The 1997 increase was the highest since 1992. The reason for the decline last year was that the workhour index, which
normally reflects the current status, was not in sync with a lackluster production increase. According to the Federal Reserve Board, the production index for chemicals and allied products last year rose only 0.5% from 1997 to 115.6, but the Labor Department's workhour index increased a much faster 1.7% to 102.7. This is in sharp contrast to the year before when output climbed 4.5% while workhours fell 0.5%. As the year progressed, productivity sank. In the first quarter, the index was actually up a slight 0.3% from the same period in 1997. But it fell 0.7% in the second quarter, 1.9% in the third quarter, and 1.7% in the fourth quarter. The overall 1.1% decline for the year compared extremely unfavorably with data for all manufacturing. According to the government, output for all U.S. manufacturing industries rose 4.2% in 1998 as workhours declined 0.7%. This resulted in a 4.9% surge in productivity for the broad category. While chemical productivity was declining last year, the cost of labor in the form of wages was increasing, resulting in a jump in the unit labor cost index.
