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Phosphorus equals life. Nothing that lives can survive without it. It is the go-to chemical feedstock for fertilizer and animal feed, and a key chemical product in a multi-billion dollar market.

This information surprises most people, as the importance of phosphorus is little known outside of the agricultural and agriproduct industries. But what should be surprising absolutely everyone is how little we are talking about the future of phosphorus supplies.

Shouldn’t We Be Doing More to Improve Phosphorus Use Efficiency?

About a decade ago, there were numerous scare stories and theories circulating that the world was due to run out of phosphorus. Wise minds soon debunked these theories, and pointed to great untapped stockpiles of phosphorus available, such as off the coast of the US Californian and Eastern seaboards, as reported to the US Dept of the Interior. As discussed in previous articles on this blog page (here, as well as here), these stockpiles contain sufficient phosphorus for the next 200 years (give or take a hundred years).

Panic over.

Or is it? Because according to Dr Dana Cordell, of Sydney’s University of Technology, the market for phosphorus could get extremely difficult in as little as 25 years. At this point, she has calculated, “global demand for phosphorus would exceed phosphorus supply”. This situation would be the result of a growing global population, and because by the year 2032 all the easily accessible rock phosphate will have been mined.

We may be technologically able to extract phosphate from more difficult locations (such as Chatham Rise, a submarine ridge off the east coast of New Zealand) but the cost increases will be significant. It is therefore fair to predict that in 25 years time, increased phosphorus demand coupled with increased complications for extraction will be reflected in market prices.

In fact, the situation for future phosphorus supply, demand, and price, is similar to the current supply, demand, and price of oil.

According to Gilbert Masters, Stanford Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Emeritus, “current oil supplies in all nations combined would last the world for only about 41 years.” And he wrote that in 2008!

If the oil is to keep flowing, new drilling technology and oil extraction improvements will be needed; something that is quite likely if this report by the BBC is to be believed.

But think how unstable oil prices are at present; over $140 a barrel in 2008, $40 a barrel in 2009, $120 in 2011, $40 in 2017.

And this price uncertainty comes despite the fact that oil is extracted from dozens of countries all over the planet, and numerous energy alternatives are available. Phosphorus meanwhile, is extracted from only a handful of countries (95% of current supply is from the disputed Morocco/Western Sahara deserts), and it has NO known replacement products.

The world has a limited supply of a vital resource, so shouldn’t everyone be talking about phosphorus use and agricultural product efficiency?

Shouldn’t We Be Doing More to Improve Phosphorus Use Efficiency?

In recent report in the sustainability website, TheConversation, Dr Cordell also outlined how inefficient phosphorus use can be. The article explains how, “Australia uses 480 kilotonnes (kt) of phosphorus each year. The majority of it, 450kt, is used in agriculture with an average efficiency rate of 25%.
This means four units of fertiliser are applied to soil to produce one unit of phosphorus in products. Those products are exported or consumed domestically. The remaining 75% (the other three units) accumulates in agricultural soils, with a small proportion also lost to waterways.”

Meanwhile, the online scientific journal Elsevier, also highlighted the problems with phosphorus wasteage, stating that, “The phosphorus balance efficiency of the major southern Australian broadacre farm enterprises varies considerably from extremely poor (5-15% for some horticultural enterprises), through poor (20-40% for grazing industries), to moderate (45-60% in cropping enterprises).”

Clearly, these efficiency rates need to be improved. They are lost money for the consumer, result in damage to the environment through run-off and eutrophication, and mean that a valuable, limited resource is being wasted.

The agribusiness industry could wait until the price of phosphorus reaches heights that will force fertilizer manufacturers to focus on improved rates of absorption, but can the planet afford to wait? Phosphorus supply chain experts are predicting long-term price increases, something that phosphorus producers should be pleased about. But fertilizer manufacturers will be less happy about price increases to their chemical feedstocks. So shouldn’t they be doing more to improve phosphorus efficiency?

Photo credit: White and Cordell

Photo credit: Greenecoegypt

The modern world is dependent on electronic devices and appliances; without them, populations would riot.

Modern appliances, meanwhile, are dependent on rare earth elements in their electronic components to significantly improve their electromagnetic properties. Everything from vacuum cleaners to refrigerators, from mobile phones to laptops, needs these rare earth minerals.

Currently 95% of world production of rare earth elements is in China, which gained its near monopoly towards the end of the 20th century. In the year 2000, the situation came to a head when a trade dispute at the WTO flared up. China began setting quotas and export licenses, and the cost of production and exports skyrocketed.

As a result, the U.S. chose to renew its mining and production operations, intent on maintaining a source of a highly strategic material. Without rare-earth elements a nation cannot make satellites, military command and control systems, a space program or even a modern army.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute (CMI) was assigned a primary goal of finding environmentally friendly and cheaper ways of sourcing rare-earth minerals. This research is now bearing fruit, and may lead to cheaper rare-earth minerals, and even cheaper electronics.

For recently the CMI reported that it has developed a computer program that will dramatically reduce the time and money it takes to identify promising chemical compounds that are used in rare-earth processing methods. As software designer and CMI scientist Federico Zahariev explains, “Traditional, quantum mechanical methods of predicting the molecular design and behavior of these extractants are too computationally expensive, and take too long for the timescale needed. So we developed a program that could create a simpler classical mechanical model which would still reflect the accuracy of the quantum mechanical model.”

The research team have named this computer program ParFit, “a Python-Based Object-Oriented Program for Fitting Molecular Mechanics Parameters to ab Initio Data.”

Reporting on the development, the online scientific journal Phys.org, notes that, “ParFit uses traditional and advanced methods to train the classical mechanical model to fit quantum mechanical information from a training set. These classical models can then be used to predict the shape of new extractants and how they bind to metals.”

“Roughly speaking, think of the molecule’s shape and structure as a system of springs, where there might need to be a lot of small tightening or loosening of different connections to make it work correctly,” said CMI Scientist Theresa Windus. “It’s the same way in which we apply the quantum mechanical calculations to create these classical mechanical models—it’s a tedious, error-prone, and lengthy process. ParFit makes this as quick as possible, automates the fitting of those parameters, and accurately reproduces the quantum mechanical energies.”

The researchers have published their results in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modelling, where they describe the program as follows; “ParFit uses a hybrid of deterministic and stochastic genetic algorithms. ParFit can simultaneously handle several molecular-mechanics parameters in multiple molecules and can also apply symmetric and antisymmetric constraints on the optimized parameters. The simultaneous handling of several molecules enhances the transferability of the fitted parameters.”

While this outlines the more scientific side of the development, the team can also appreciate the practical application of the program, as they state in the publication that, “As an example, a series of phosphine oxides, important for metal extraction chemistry, are parametrized using ParFit.”

Interestingly, they also note that, “ParFit is in an open source program available for free on GitHub (https://github.com/fzahari/ParFit).”

“The program’s capabilities enable the researchers to model an almost unlimited number of new extractants,” says software developer and CMI Scientist Marilu Dick-Perez. For example, the classical models used in the software code, HostDesigner – developed by Benjamin Hay of Supramolecular Design Institute, creates and quickly assesses possible extractants for viability and targets extractants that are best suited for further research. “We’ve reduced the computational work from 2-3 years down to three months,” she said. “We’ve incorporated as much expert knowledge into this program as possible, so that even a novice user can navigate the program.”

Given the free access to the program and its alleged ease of use, the impact that this program may have on rare-earth mineral sourcing could be huge. While it is unlikely to break China’s near-monopoly on production, it could still reduce costs, and with Beijing further embracing market economics, this development may lead to cheaper chemical exports of the vital rare-earth elements that we all use.

Photo credit: Saskatchewan Research Council

The chemical industry is facing uncertain times; the future price of oil is unclear, the major growth regions of the Far East are cooling, regional chemical legislation (such as REACH, TSCA, K-REACH, etc) is threatening to swamp the industry with red-tape, while the massive mergers of Dow/DuPont, ChemChina/Syngenta and others are creating research and production cuts across a range of sectors. And no one knows when all the changing will end.

At least that is the take-away package being offered by a recent PwC report on the future of the chemicals industry. A report that paints a gloomy picture for global economic growth, and warns that the chemical industry will face some difficult years ahead.

As the report states, “ The structural headwinds in the chemicals industry are blowing like a gale out of the global economy. In a funk since peaking in 2007, global economies have been unable to reach the 35-year GDP growth average of 3.5% in six of the past eight years. And the two years of ‘high’ growth were more of a bounce back from the sharp downturn of 2009 than precursors of a sustained turnaround.”

It continues to outline how this will impact the chemicals industry, stating, “Within a problematic macroeconomic environment, made worse for many multinationals by the strong dollar, demand for chemicals has fallen. Overall industry sales growth increased an anemic 2.1% in 2016 as the sector faced declining industrial production and broad inventory rightsizing by many of its customers. Chemicals companies that sell petroleum-based products often fell short of these industry averages because lower oil prices led to sharp top-line declines, sometimes in the range of 30% to 40%.”

Region by region, the report diagnoses challenging situations that no single chemical company can avoid or prevent. For example, it outlines economic fears in the US over the Trump administration’s protectionist stance. While the President has also proposed reducing the amount of red tape that businesses face, thus aiding domestic growth, any restrictions made on international trade will seriously impact the global chemical industry.

In Europe meanwhile, the UK is struggling to lessen the impact of Brexit, while at the same time trying to encourage growth. The rest of Europe has been experiencing economic stagnation for years, despite monetary easing, such that in general, the economic outlook for the European chemicals industry does not look too promising.

The same can be said of the Middle East, which is going through a period of massive change as Arab economies work out how to survive beyond oil. This has resulted in attempts to increase local production of non-oil manufacturing, as well as increase domestic demand. The chemical industry must find a new way to success in these changing economic times.

The Far East, and especially China, is the bright spot on the horizon for chemical traders, with a growth rate of 6%. However, even this economic boom is showing a downturn from the double digit growth of only a few years previously. Meanwhile, leaders there are hoping to change the economic model from a largely export based role, to one with increased domestic demand and consumption.

The chemical industry specifically, needs a process of adjustment, as PwC reports, “Margin pressures are increasing among domestic chemicals producers due to an overcapacity in basic commodities and in certain value chains (such as acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene [ABS], a popular plastic used in manufacturing, and purified terephthalic acid [PTA], a polyester) as well as inefficient plants and processes.”

Outside of regional challenges, the chemical industry as a whole should prepare itself for the trend, from both consumers and producers, towards sustainable manufacturing. Increased levels of recycling and the further development of the circular economy will mean that many chemical manufacturers will need to develop more energy efficient processes or source chemical raw material sustainably if they are to grow.

As PwC notes, “With rare exceptions, chemicals companies can no longer depend on volume to drive growth. Structural weakness in most markets and recycling and reuse, which impact the sale of virgin materials, are combining to substantially reduce demand. Pockets of potential growth exist in new materials, such as biopolymers, which are renewable polymers produced by living organisms, but they are still some time away from reaching scale.”

The report also adds that, “In 2017, barring a recession in the U.S. and Europe or a slowdown in China, Moody’s Investor Service expects EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) in the chemicals industry to slip by 1 or 2 percent year-over-year.”

These are changing times, and while change is often something to be feared, it is better to see the challenges ahead than to step into the unknown. If the report is correct, then many chemical companies will need to make serious adjustments to their manufacturing methods, business models, and raw material sources. Maybe a downturn can be avoided, or maybe an adjustment in the market is needed. Unfortunately, the PwC report, like so many things in the chemical industry’s future, cannot be certain.

Photo credit: naturalnews.com