Posted on 03/25/2022 8:22:56 AM PDT by rktman
I read there was a large deposit of lithium another rare earths found in Maine I think it was but they turned around and said no mining not in our backyard.
It would only be a temporary situation. Industrial neon is refined from air. The delay would be in setting up production of machinery that can do that as globalization and the paid for former Soviet gear in Ukraine ran all the companies who used to make such machinery out of the market or out of business entirely.
As to how long the delay would be and the impact of the delay... well, that’s another story.
Correct, all vehicles and most electronic devices are suffering due to the chip shortage. Just pointing out just how big a fallacy the assertion that “EVs are the solution to the car shortage/gas prices/everything” is.
To be fair, aluminum production leapt forward by more than a couple orders of magnitude in the last half century... And the body panels of aluminum cars don’t have to be made of metal themselves any more either.
Actually industrial Neon is a derivative of steel manufacturing. That is one of the reasons why harvesting of it is done in or near areas with significant steel production. Without robust steel production you don’t get industrial Neon in any significant quantity and the equipment to harvest the gas is quite specialized. Could we build it ourselves ? Yes definitely, eventually but then we still need the industrial scale steel production which has shrunk in this country and now is centered in China and Russia.
Not to worry. When we get to 10% EV saturation the electric power grid will crash and the entire nation will be in brownouts.
“... just how big a fallacy the assertion that “EVs are the solution to the car shortage/gas prices/everything”...” Expect a call from petee buttplug or commie-la ‘fweedumb’ hawiss, you heretic. LOL!
Brownouts? Just plug your ford F-150 pick up into the house and all will be just fine and dandy(at least according to the ads we’ve seen). Do none of these people live in the real world?
A Tesla supercharger uses something like 150,000 watts.
Nothing better to ruin humanity than humans.
Sorry, that’s something I actually know something about. While yes, harvesting of industrial neon is most economical, efficient and convenient as a by product of steel manufacturing, it is not required. It can be produced by literally any cryogenic air fractionator company - if they can get and install the appropriate additional equipment. The welding gas suppliers in particular could produce it easily as it would make less
Here in Dallas, we have zero steelmaking industry. Yet Texas Instruments at US75 and I-635 has an AirLiquide fractionator literally across the street from them that supplies neon processed out of the local air - I’ve done contracting for TI and asked about the pipes running from AirLiquide to TI.
Hit post too soon: “The welding gas suppliers in particular could produce it easily as it would make less” should end with “... make less of a change in their existing processes over medical gas producers.”
I don’t disagree that Neon could be harvested worldwide but it is not as easy as you seem to infer. What we are talking about here is Semiconductor Grade Neon about 45-50% of which is produced in Ukraine with the majority of the rest coming from Russia and China. The US produces almost no Semiconductor Grade Neon. In order for an company to modify their existing infrastructure, it would require significant modifications to cold box distillation systems and construction of separate specific refinement systems to raise the harvested Neon to Semiconductor Grade. The estimates I have seen put those modifications in an 8-12 month time frame from initial concept to start up along with significant outlays of capital. At that point, theoretically you could have chip production cold for almost a year for many producers who cannot source Neon for their needs. After that initial year, would take new Neon producers quite some time to catch up to the accrued demand.
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