a thought, page-8

I think that Orica (ex ICI) would be watching very closely. They need to balance their sales of sodium-based chemicals (mainly sodium hydroxide) with their chlorine based chemicals (eg hydrochloric acid) because of the fixed ratio of the 2 coming from electrolysis of salt.

Many plants end up dumping chlorine as calcium chloride to get rid of excess, which obviously imposes a cost. In the 80's and 90's I worked in plants that dumped excess chlorine in waterways as bleach. It is interesting that "metal cleaning and treatment" is the first use listed on their web page for hydrochloric acid. I presume that means steel plants are the biggest users.

If APG comes along and displaces this use of chlorine, it will be quite uncomfortable for Orica. It will be interesting to see in what way they may respond. Fortunately APG is not a customer, and the steel plants have other motivation for using the APG process (mill scale recycling).

Re INL, I thought they had already got hold of a site in Newcastle for their plant and were proceeding independently.