Latest news with #PDH
Business Times
27-05-2025
- Business
- Business Times
Chinese plastics buyers resist switch back to US propane despite pause in trade war
[SINGAPORE] Chinese plastics factories left without US raw material when trade relations collapsed earlier this year are holding back from returning to many of those suppliers despite a pause in hostilities, underscoring the difficulty in restoring commercial ties between the world's two largest economies. Beijing's retaliation to US President Donald Trump's so-called reciprocal tariffs effectively made American energy sales to China unviable, including the propane used to make plastics. Last year, before the new administration took the helm, almost 60 per cent of Chinese imports of the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) came from the US. Buyers won a reprieve earlier this month after duties were dramatically scaled back for 90 days, but they remain wary of resuming purchases in case the tariff war flares up again, traders said. Chinese propane dehydrogenation (PDH) units that turn the gas into building blocks for plastics were still securing cargoes from Canada and the Arab Gulf as at last week, said the traders, who asked not to be identified discussing commercially sensitive matters. As more and more buyers in the world's largest plastics industry become comfortable with the replacement supplies, deals are being concluded at a narrower premium to benchmark prices, they said. That could indicate a willingness among sellers to capture Chinese business for the longer term. Last week, a Chinese buyer bought an Arab Gulf cargo of propane at a premium of US$30 a tonne above the Saudi contract price for July, the traders said. That compares to as much as US$70 earlier in the month, when the frantic rush for alternatives was at its peak. The most recently announced Saudi benchmark was set in April at about US$600 a tonne. Buyers also continue to scoop up LPG shipments from the Arab Gulf comprising propane and butane, albeit at a discount last week of at least US$50 per tonne, they said. The addition of butane makes the cargoes less attractive to PDH units. After factoring in the current tariff of 10 per cent, margins for a Chinese PDH running US propane 'are not lucrative' and stand at around US$20 a tonne, said Samantha Hartke, head of market analysis for the Americas at Vortexa, a cargo-tracking and analytics firm. 'Volumes aren't going to move' from America to China, unless the price of propane falls in the US, or the price of substitute supplies arriving in East Asia rises, she said. BLOOMBERG
Reuters
09-04-2025
- Business
- Reuters
China petchem plants face shutdown as tariffs on US LPG loom
SINGAPORE/NEW DELHI, April 9 (Reuters) - Chinese petrochemical makers that buy $11 billion worth of U.S. liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) annually are poised to cut output or shut for maintenance in coming weeks as Beijing's retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports drive up costs, industry insiders said. The industry of over 30 propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plants relies heavily on U.S. LPG, or propane, for processing into plastics intermediary propylene. The Reuters Tariff Watch newsletter is your daily guide to the latest global trade and tariff news. Sign up here. Advertisement · Scroll to continue Report This Ad Armaan Ashraf, global head of natural gas liquids at consultancy FGE, said tariffs could force Chinese PDH operators to cut average operating rates by nearly 15 percentage points and curb demand for propane from steam crackers and PDH plants by at least 500,000 metric tons per month. The tit-for-tat trade war that saw China on Wednesday escalate retaliatory duties on U.S. imports to 84% threatens to put a Chinese PDH sector already struggling under thin margins for two years into what an east China-based executive with a major PDH plant called a "harsh winter". The executive, declining to be named due to company policy, expects overall PDH plant utilisation rates to drop below half of total industry capacity as early as May. China's 731,000 bpd-PDH sector operated at nearly 70% of capacity in March, down from a peak of around 85% in 2020, according to industry insiders and FGE, with plants losing an average of 480 yuan ($65.31) per ton in the week of April 6, deepening from the week ago's 384 yuan, LSEG Oil Research analysts said. Last year, China bought a record 17.3 million tons of U.S. propane, or 550,000 barrels per day, 60% of China's total imports of the gas liquid. The trade war during President Donald Trump's first term brought China's LPG imports to a halt for nearly two years, but the industry was much smaller then, and operators used cargoes from the Middle East as replacement. Fuelled by cheap U.S. propane, a by-product of the shale gas boom, PDH plants mushroomed on China's east coast over the past decade, leading to overcapacity amid weakening demand for propylene, said traders and the executive. Prices of U.S. propane for Asian exports, or the Far East Index assessment, fell nearly 30% to $425 per ton this week as traders factored last Friday's retaliatory tariffs by Beijing. In physical shipments, it's unclear whether U.S. suppliers and Chinese buyers can agree to lower prices to absorb the shock. While some buyers may be able to re-negotiate with suppliers if contracts permit, others, with term supply deals, may be forced to resell to other Asian buyers. A growing price gap limits Chinese plants' ability to swap U.S. shipments for rival Middle East barrels that are mostly destined for South Korea and India, traders said. "The market is still in massive shock and confusion, with buyers and sellers struggling to reach a physical deal. The tariffs have thrown the pricing structure out of the balance," said a veteran trader. ($1 = 7.3493 Chinese yuan renminbi)
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Malva nut residue could help heal wounds, improve medical devices, study shows
Feb. 17 (UPI) -- The humble malva nut, which for centuries has been used to make herbal tea in Southeast Asian countries, could have a much more important future as a sustainable source for medical applications, U.S. researchers say. The nut, known as Pangdahai or PDH, has a unique ability to expand tremendously when submerged in water. That property sparked an idea to tap it for use as a low-cost, natural and sustainable resource for medical devices that use hydrogels for such things as wound care, regenerative medicine and adhesives for skin-attached sensors and devices, according to scientists at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. In a study published Monday in the scientific journal Matter, a university Chemistry Department team led by doctoral candidate Changxu Sun and Professor Bozhi Tian demonstrated that the gooey residue left over from soaking PDH to make an herbal tea for soothing sore throats possesses previously unrealized abilities when processed into an all-natural hydrogel. The substance can also outperform commercially available gels in transmitting accurate signals while monitoring heartbeats for electrocardiograms via skin-attached patches, they determined. The findings could have broad implications in the search for sustainable alternatives in the design of many kinds of medical devices that use sticky hydrogels -- especially in the lower-income Southeast Asian countries where malva nut trees are common and locally produced medical resources are rare, Sun told UPI. "We wanted to see what the potential could be for a new kind of naturally derived hydrogel to benefit healthcare applications," he said. Hydrogels are widely used in wound care and medical monitoring due to their excellent mechanical properties, electrical conductivity and adhesion. And they have become a key element in one of the most promising emerging fields in the medical device industry -- flexible electronic products that connect living biological tissues to synthetic electronic systems, such as medical sensors and wearable devices. Many of the currently available synthetic hydrogels, however, are made from relatively costly and non-degradable materials and have been known to display poor biocompatibility, difficult degradation and weak skin adaptability. Thus, the search is on for low-cost, organic renewable natural polymers as alternatives, which is where the fruit of the malva tree comes in. The nut expands to eight times in volume and 20 times by weight when immersed in water, leaving a jelly that is thrown out. That waste material, however, looked and acted like potentially valuable hydrogel to Sun -- a hunch the University of Chicago researchers have now shown to be correct. "One application for this hydrogel is in regenerative medicine and wound healing," Sun said. "We found the material can actually promote cell migration and the generation of new cells." Another promising application is bio-signal monitoring, such as ECG patches, which are commonly used in everyday medicine. "With those devices, if you put the electrode directly onto the skin, you will expect some level of noise, and that requires the use of some interstitial material between the electrode and the skin," Sun said. "Usually synthetic polymers or hydrogels are used for this, but we thought, OK, can we instead use a simple, environmentally friendly material instead?" The answer turned out to be "yes," and in fact, Sun said the malva nut hydrogel produced an even better "signal-to-noise" ratio than current synthetic versions. An expert in the field not affiliated with the study, Chi Hwan Lee, a professor of biomedical and mechanical engineering at Purdue University, agreed it is "essential" that sustainable, plant-based materials be developed to supply the quickly expanding use of flexible electronics in biomedicine. "Traditional electronics rely on non-biodegradable materials that contribute to e-waste and biocompatibility issues, whereas plant-derived biopolymer hydrogels, like the PDH-based material in this study, offer an eco-friendly alternative with excellent flexibility and biocompatibility," he told UPI in an email. Large-scale production of such materials could be accomplished by optimizing them for existing microfabrication facilities, he added. While the development of natural hydrogels has made significant progress in recent years, other experts caution there are still some challenges and issues waiting to be addressed. One of them, according to a Chinese study published last year, is that to produce sufficiently high electrical conductivity and strong adhesion, natural materials generally still must be blended with synthetic materials, which reduces the biodegradability and biocompatibility of the resulting product. "It is crucial to develop hydrogels based on entirely natural polymeric materials, which are capable of exhibiting excellent properties without relying on other synthetic functional materials," the authors state. Other drawbacks include their "low performance rates" and high production costs, which makes them uncompetitive with commercial products in the new era of flexible electronics. All three of those concerns could be answered with the malva nut hydrogel, Sun said, noting it is 100% organic, performs as well or better than synthetic materials and is simple and inexpensive to produce. And it could especially be a boon to poorer Southeast Asian where the tree grows, such as Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. "They can strategically use the fruits of the tree to help them be self-reliant in their healthcare resources," he said. "In those countries, major cities may have adequate resources, but with villages and small towns, indigenous plants and trees could provide some solutions."
