The study, published in the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) journal The Geographical Journal, highlights that global demand for sulfuric acid is set to rise significantly from '246 to 400 million tonnes' by 2040 - a result of more intensive agriculture and the world moving away from fossil fuels.
[...] A vital part of modern manufacturing, sulfuric acid is required for the production of phosphorus fertilisers that help feed the world, and for extracting rare metals from ores essential to the rapidly required green economy transition, like cobalt and nickel used in high-performance Li-ion batteries.
Currently, over 80% of the global sulfur supply is in the form of sulfur waste from the desulfurisation of crude oil and natural gas that reduces the sulfur dioxide gas emissions that cause acid rain. However, decarbonisation of the global economy to deal with climate change will significantly reduce the production of fossil fuels - and subsequently the supply of sulfur.
[...] "What we're predicting is that as supplies of this cheap, plentiful, and easily accessible form of sulfur dry up, demand may be met by a massive increase in direct mining of elemental sulfur. This, by contrast, will be dirty, toxic, destructive, and expensive.
[...] The authors also explore several ways that demand for sulfur could be reduced as part of the transition to post-fossil fuel economies, including recycling phosphorus in wastewater for the fertiliser industry, by increasing the recycling of lithium batteries, or by using lower energy capacity/weight ratio batteries, as these require less sulfur for their production.
[...] However, they conclude that by recognising the sulfur crisis now, national and international policies can be developed to manage future demand, increase resource recycling, and develop alternative cheap supplies that have minimal environmental and social impact.
Journal Reference:
Mark Maslin, Livia Van Heerde, Simon Day. Sulfur: A potential resource crisis that could stifle green technology and threaten food security as the world decarbonises [open], Geogr J, 2022. DOI: 10.1111/geoj.12475
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday September 09 2022, @02:46PM (9 children)
Hydrogen sulfide famously smells like rotten eggs, and this article also smells, of media spin to make it more dramatic. Talks as if use of sulfur consumes atoms of sulfur, doing what exactly? Making them vanish into nothingness? Obviously that's not happening. Only way to destroy a stable element is nuclear reactions, and none of our industrial uses of sulfur gets anywhere close to that.
Where is all this sulfur going? Batteries? The article mentions batteries as one destination. Where else? Back into the environment in such diffuse forms that there's no recovering it? Likely current usage is careless of recovery, dumping the used sulfur compounds as waste, not worth the expense of what is certain to be energy intensive methods. Tighten up, and viola! No more sulfur shortage "crisis". I'd guess there's also lots of room for improvement in recovery methods.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2022, @03:47PM
It seems a good deal of it goes to agricultural fertilizer, which is a need that is expected to keep increasing over time.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Friday September 09 2022, @04:18PM
Where does it go? Sulfuric acid. It is the most produced industrial chemical in the world.
"So what is it THAT used for?"
Damn near everything.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Friday September 09 2022, @04:31PM
from the fine summmary:
My read of this is that fertilizer use is increasing, and supply of sulfur is reducing.
I wonder how well the fertilizer demand scales with the supply, since a lot of fertilizer also uses petroleum products as an input. Depends on how high the world's oil production is in H2S, which probably varies over time. Scalability also probably doesn't matter if there are other industries creating demand who are willing to pay more - agriculture depends on cheap fertilizer in order to be profitable.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Friday September 09 2022, @04:45PM (3 children)
Any "shortage" of anything (or close to anything) boils down to availability of a cheap source. We don't have a shortage of rare earth elements either. They don't get "consumed". They are in our spent batteries. It just takes way more power and money to extract it in a usable form than to mine it.
Same with sulfur. Right now, that SO2 is a waste product of fuel production, and since it's pretty much a waste product and they're fairly happy to get rid of it, it's cheap. If it has to be produced explicitly, that price will rise dramatically, and the price of any product that depends on it will follow.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 09 2022, @08:14PM (2 children)
Seems to me like there are plenty of presently non-viable sources of high sulfur fossil fuel which, if the sulfur were in sufficient demand, would make those fuels viable. Make demand high enough and you can refine the sulfur from the oil, then store the desulfurized oil back in the salt mines or other strategic reserves - for the day when population has crashed so low that it won't matter if we all burn oil again, or possibly an emergency CO2 generation effort to stave off an impending ice age.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday September 10 2022, @01:13PM (1 child)
I think deliberate CO2 creation to avoid an ice age won't be necessary since we'll already burn all sorts of crap just to stay warm in such a scenario.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday September 10 2022, @01:57PM
That depends on how many humans survive the nuclear winter.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2022, @06:42PM
Some sulfur goes into vulcanizing rubber, that was Charles Goodyear's contribution. While it's a small fraction of the mixture, there are a *lot* of tires made each year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Goodyear#Perfection_and_patent_of_vulcanization [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday September 10 2022, @08:36PM
Googling around, it seems that sulfur was mined before we started getting it as a byproduct from oil. The concern about the environmental impact of mining is valid, but there won't be a shortage. It's a highly abundant element in the Earth's crust. Volcanoes famously spew it, and there's an infamous artisanal mine in Indonesia where poor workers cut huge chunks of it amidst toxic gases of the active system, and haul it out of the crater in baskets.
If oil-derived sources go away, we'll bring old mines back in to production and/or explore formations for sulfur deposits. There are probably old volcanic systems just waiting to be exploited for that.
To address the sustainability and environmental impact is another matter. S is an essential element for life, and it's got a cycle that includes organisms just like C and other elements do. It might be sustainable to pull it from biomass fuel operations which can be closed-loop (carbon neutral) also. Further study will be needed, but if short S supply from fossil fuels and mining drives up the price, then the ability to sell sulfur as a byproduct from biomass fuel production might help kick the latter in to profitability.
Bottom line, I think we can solve this problem.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 09 2022, @04:56PM (2 children)
We flush plenty fertilizer down the drain now. If we sterilize it and recycle it we'll solve several problems at once.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 09 2022, @05:42PM (1 child)
Absolutely: Humanure [humanurehandbook.com] has been used as a fertilizer for most of human history, and would probably benefit from using more of it.
Ideally, we'd try to keep the urine and feces separated: First off, the urine is way stinkier, and makes the feces smell much worse too. Second, the ammonia in the urine is useful separately from the poo. And the poo will compost faster if it's not covered in piss.
Of course, this process also benefits from eating healthier.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 10 2022, @09:28AM
It can be tricky because of all the drugs we use. Some drugs can still have effects at very low levels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_pharmaceuticals_and_personal_care_products#Fate_of_pharmaceuticals_in_sewage_treatment_plants [wikipedia.org]
See also: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58776-z [nature.com]
Not saying it shouldn't be done (after all letting the conventionally treated waste water go straight to the ocean with all the leftover drugs is probably causing some problems).