©2023 Wolfersdorff Consulting Berlin
Dear colleagues & friends of recovered Carbon Black,
Here is your September dose of recovered Carbon Black news. We now have 6.100 subscribers. Thank you for your interest!
In this month's edition we talk about carbon black and recovered carbon black production:
Oranienburg Black
SLTC Jornadas de Caucho y Jornadas Reciclaje
CTRA Conference
CAPEX of carbon black production
Oranienburg Black
In my neighborhood used to be one of the first active gas black plants in Germany. Some of the buildings are still there, but nature is now taking over the former area of the "Russwerk Oranienburg".
At first, I thought this carbon black plant belonged to Degussa and I studied everything I could find about the gripping story of Degussa, August Weglin, the Dortmund Consortium and the CK3/CK4 gas black processes (CK3 used naphtalene / 93.7% C as feedstock and CK4 anthracene / 94.3% C) in the 1930 under the Nazi regime in Germany.
But, the Oranienburg plant was one of the 19 Germany carbon black works that did not belong to Degussa. In my short video "Oranienburg Black" I am telling (part of) the story of this active gas black plant, filmed on a Sirui 35mm T2.9 1.6x anamorphic manual focus lens for cinema wide screen. I wanted to give the video a vintage look, which I did with KodakChrome film emulation, grain and artefacts as well as specific colour grading.
This video is hosted on a new "@recoveredcarbonblack" Youtube channel. You can subscribe to this new channel to always get news on recovered carbon black videos.
PS 1: I do not currently plan to film the "recovered Carbon Black Documentary Film" on anamorphic glass. At present, I only have one wide angle anamorphic lens. Anamorphic glass is also quite heavy and requires additional focus pull add-ons which adds even more weight to the travel equipment.
PS 2: Reading about the German carbon black story, I had many learnings for our recovered carbon black industry, including reflections about consortia, process & product diversity, scale-up, investments and supply chain collaboration.
PS 3: By the way, similarily, when interviewing Robert Hanson together with Paul Ita in the Smithers online workshop for sustainable carbon blacks, I thought that Monolith not only changed the paradigm for carbon black manufacture, but also serves as good example of solid growth from a start-up to a corporation with 300 employees. I am convinced that the recovered carbon black industry can get a lot of inspiration from Monolith.
PS 4: Yes, for a while I have pondered about whether I could build a recovered carbon black production works at the place of the Russwerk Oranienburg . . .
SLTC Jornadas de Caucho y Jornadas Reciclaje
SLTC is the Sociedad Latinoamericana de Tecnología del Caucho, the Latinoamerican Society of Rubber Technology. I have been presenting about recovered carbon black in Spanish on SLTC conferences in Buenos Aires 2018, Santiago de Chile 2019 and Queretaro (Mexico) 2019.
This time, kindly sponsors my visit & presentations at the Jornadas 2023 in Lima, Peru, and also invited my to their campus in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Many thanks to Marly Jacobi , Jordao Gheller Jr. and to the whole SLTC team and in particular Karina Potarsky and Emanuel Bertalot !
You will surely see my travel vlogs from Brazil and Peru on Linkedin and Youtube.
Be part of the business round
CTRA Conference
On September 3rd, the Chinese Tyre Recycling Association held "The Third International Cooperation on Tire (rubber) Recycling Conferences and Exhibitions Trade Fair" conference, were I presented for Smithers about recovered carbon black in the western and in the eastern world. You can watch the video on my new Youtube channel.
CAPEX of carbon black production
You might already have seen the educational content posted on the page of WOLFERSDORFF CONSULTING BERLIN. Last Friday, I posted a CAPEX cost chart for a variety of carbon black and recovered carbon black processes with data from public sources. I did not write explantions, which I now want to do in this newsletter.
WOLFERSDORFF CONSULTING BERLIN on LinkedIn: #carbonblack #production #capex
Specialty processes like acetylene conductive blacks, thermal blacks as well as methane blacks have relative high CAPEX cost per capacity. For all processes, CAPEX comes down with scale, but only the very flexible processes like the furnace process scale to six digit capacity. The only figure for the gas black process is a historical figure but I left it in for curiosity.
I included three linear curves in addition to the project data, one for low CAPEX Indian furnace technology, a second for high CAPEX western or specialty furnace technology and then one for western recovered carbon black technology. Clearly, recovered carbon black CAPEX costs need and will come down with scale.
This year, some recovered carbon black start-ups report investors to be cautious with big CAPEX projects. However, big CAPEX does not break the financial plan of a venture, but big OPEX does. Major contributions to OPEX are the thermal pyrolysis efficiency and the cost of electrical power. This will be a key competitive element for growth in the years to come.
Events this month
XVII Jornadas Latinoamericanas de Tecnología del Caucho, Sept. 18th-22nd
III Jornadas Latinoamericanas de Reciclaje de Neumáticos, Sept. 20th-22nd
Both events are in the Centro de Eventos NOS, Piso 6, PUCP, Lima, Perú.
See you there!
Thanks
Thank you for reading! Take care and best wishes from Berlin,
Martin
Prospects for recovered Carbon Black 2023
Wolfersdorff Consulting Berlin
#circulareconomy #recoveredcarbonblack #carbonblack#pyrolysis #sustainability #circular #feedstocks
