Expansions: ExxonMobil to invest US$100 mn in upgrading isopropyl alcohol facility; Wanhua Chemical/IBU-tec to develop European LFP battery material

US materials firm ExxonMobil has announced plans to invest more than US$100 million in facility upgrades to produce high-purity isopropyl alcohol, a critical material for semiconductor chip manufacturing in the U.S. The facility is located at the company’s Baton Rouge Complex in the legacy chemical plant.

The investment will be used for upgrading the chemical complex to produce a highly purified form of isopropyl alcohol. The substance, used to clean and process microchips, is witnessing an increasing demand from the tech industry.

The company’s decision to spend on the upgrading of its chemical facility comes amid a surge in demand for microchips, driven by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced cloud computing. The boom in AI is driving tech companies to build additional data centres, which require specialised chips along with in-house chips used by these companies to train specialized AI models. This is expected to result in a surge in demand for high-purity isopropyl alcohol, which is required for cleaning these chips.

ExxonMobil stated that the upgrades at the chemical plant are expected to be completed by 2027. The upgraded chemical facility will allow it to meet the increasing demand for the product in the US, especially the semiconductor fabrication plants (fabs) that are currently under construction.

US-based companies are at the moment importing high-purity isopropyl alcohol from Taiwan and Japan to meet their needs, as the domestic production and supply are not enough.

In other news,Wanhua Chemical Group Battery Technology Co and European manufacturer of lithium iron phosphate materials IBU-tec have entered into a joint agreement in Weimar, Germany. The partnership with IBU-tec does not affect the progress of concrete talks with further companies on far-reaching cooperation, which Wanhua Chemical is currently conducting.

Within the framework of the partnership, IBU-tec and Wanhua Chemical will carry out a scale-up towards the industrial scale in the coming months. The partners expect to have reliable results in the third quarter of the current year as to whether the joint development will meet market requirements in Europe and North America. If this is the case, it will open up extensive potential for the production of an LFP cathode material in Germany that would be part of a European value chain in the battery sector.

 This event marks the formal opening of the in-depth cooperation between the two parties in the field of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) materials.

In the field of battery materials, lithium iron phosphate has gradually become a mainstream product in the new energy automobile and energy storage market with its advantages of high safety and long cycle life. In recent years, Wanhua Chemical has established a technology platform integrating battery material technology development, equipment technology development, and electric core application technology research, and its lithium iron phosphate products have been upgraded continuously. In this cooperation, the company will establish a local supply chain to supply LFP materials to European customers.

LFP shows the dominant position (almost 80% share in EV in Chinese market), and is almost the only commercially available solution for energy storage. Wanhua Chemical adheres to the globalisation strategy and has set up seven R&D centres in Beijing, Shanghai, Hungary, Spain, etc., nine production bases and more than ten overseas sales organisations, and IBU-tec, as a local German Li-ion material factory, focuses on the R&D and production of LFP, and owns a mature R&D and production system.

In the future, the two sides will also discuss the establishment of a joint laboratory in Europe, to begin cooperation in the field of battery innovation and R&D, to provide strong local R&D support for the development of the European battery industry.

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