The Industrial Gas Industry supplies a variety of fuel gases used in metal cutting and related metal fabrication applications. The most frequently used of these gases are acetylene, propylene, propane, natural gas, and some “mixture” fuel gases including Chemtane, Chemolene, and HGX. In this report, Cryo- Gas International updates readers on the acetylene and propylene markets.
The two most important events impacting the fuel gases markets during the past four years are the breadth and depth of the recession and the interruption of Carbide Industry LLC’s calcium carbide operations at its Louisville, KY plant from late March 2011 to April 2012. The overlap and interaction of the recession and the carbide supply disruption created havoc with production of US carbidebased acetylene, the US’s largest source of merchant acetylene supply. The manner in which the fuel gas players handled these disruptions, however, is a credit to the industry.
The overlap and interaction of the recession and the carbide supply disruption created havoc with production of US carbidebased acetylene, the US’s largest source of merchant acetylene supply.
Containing the Chaos
The year-long outage at Carbide Industry (CI) caused a loss of 75,000+ tons of carbide capacity. Reaction to this was swift, with imports from Argentina, Brazil, China, and South Africa quickly pouring in to replace supply. During the plant’s outage over 60,000 tons of carbide imports helped to fill the void. Many credit CI for their fast response and support for their customers. The company arranged for imported carbide for those who required that service. They also helped with container issues; many industrial gas distributors who produced carbide-based acetylene could not handle the change from normally used 2.5 ton flo-bin containers to the imported 35 to 50 gallon drum containers (holding 350 to 500 pounds). In those cases CI took the imported containers, extracted the carbide, re-crushed, sized, and repackaged it, and reshipped the carbide in the typical containers. The Central Carbide affiliate plant of CI also pushed its Pryor, OK production hard to increase its output to make up for some of the remaining shortfall.
During this period the cost of carbide soared. At one point it jumped to about $1,600/ton, but has fortunately settled back to $1,000 to $1,300/ton since April 2012. During this time, some noticed that acetylene yield for imported carbide was off by 10–15 percent from the normally accepted 4.75 cf/lb of CI’s carbide. But CI notes how appreciative they and the industry are for the service of the carbide exporters.
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