Road Clears for Calcium Chlori essays

Road Clears for Calcium Chlori essays Calcium chloride is used for such things as dust control, road deicing, and to assist in oil and gas drilling. It is easily manufactured for a variety of sources; underground brines in Michigan, a by-product of hydrochloric acid streams, and soda ash can harbor calcium chloride. For years the market was supplied by three major manufactures- Dow Chemical, General Chemical, and Tetra Technologies- all of which produce such a high-volume that it creates oversupply and poor prices. These companies already produced roughly 1.5 million tons per year and out of that only about 1 million tons are used. In 1995, Ambar Incorporated decided that they were going to enter the calcium chloride market. They spent over $60 million on supplies and opened behind schedule in 1997. Then North America experienced the warm and low precipitation winters in 1999 and 2000, there was an incredibly low demand for calcium chloride and the company failed. The loss has not been felt by the other companies yet, for the production level this year was low. There have also been cutbacks which are reducing the amount of calcium chloride produced from hydrochloric acid. This is not good for the makers of calcium chloride, for higher prices would hurt the amount they can put into their feedstock. Also Shell Chemicals which supplies Tetra with their by-product stream is working on making that stream more acidic so it can be sold more as acid, a market where there is more money available. Tetra is still negotiating to stay on the site, but are not worried for their other facilities could support the needed output. General Chemical, bases their calcium chloride operation in the largest facility in North America, there they coproduce soda ash and calcium chloride. Although many facilities used to dot across North America, when natural soda ash was found in the 1940s in Wyoming the price was so low that competitors ...