Post by
galvanized on Jul 15, 2022 4:13pm
Sulfur is the new gold.
The supply of smelter acid is no longer anywhere close to meeting the demand in North America, so it is necessary to burn elemental sulfur at an acid plant to create the needed supply. This is called "burner acid" . It takes about 1 tonne of sulfur to make 3 tonnes of acid.
The supply of elemental sulphur in North America is also insufficient to meet the demand for burner acid, and so up until recently, the shortfall was being made up with imports from Russia....oops.
So since the start of the Ukraine war, the price of elemental sulfur has escalated greatly and now sits at about $650 tonne. This means that the materials need to make a tonne of sulfuric acid is over $200 plus whatever the processing cost would be.
It seems likely that the acid price is going to stay quite high for as long as the Russian supply is disrupted.