[Basic Chemicals] Fluorochemicals Part 2: Fluorides

[Basic Chemicals] Fluorochemicals Part 2: Fluorides

Overview
Fluorine, one of the most reactive elements in nature, exists in a wide variety of inorganic and organic compounds. Its downstream applications span everything from traditional rail transit to new materials and new energy—a real multi-front expansion. Because fluorochemicals carry high added value, many investors call it a golden industry. China has already become the world's largest producer and consumer of fluorochemicals, with annual output value exceeding 100 billion yuan.

Fluorochemical products resist high and low temperatures, aging, and friction, and they insulate—so they're widely used in military, chemical, machinery, and home appliance industries, in transportation like autos and rail, and in high-end fields like aerospace, electronic information, and new energy. The industry's value is concentrated mainly in mid- and downstream products—fluoropolymers, new-energy fluorine materials, and so on—and in recent years the industrial structure has gradually shifted downstream. Starting from fluorspar, as processing depth increases, added value grows geometrically, and the share of downstream production keeps rising. Over 50% of the world's fluorspar goes into fluorochemicals. Fluorochemical products mainly include refrigerants, fluoropolymers, and new-energy fluorine materials, all with high added value, and their use in high-end fields is deepening.

Refrigerants
In a refrigeration cycle, a heat engine uses the phase change of a refrigerant to transfer heat—the refrigerant absorbs heat when it vaporizes in the evaporator and releases heat when it condenses in the condenser. Refrigerants come in many types: ammonia, nitrogen, fluorine-containing, water, hydrocarbons, and more. Fluorine refrigerants, with their excellent thermodynamic performance, are the most common, accounting for about half of the global refrigerant industry.

ODP is the ozone depletion potential, calculated with the first-generation CFC refrigerant R11 as the standard; other substances' ODP values are relative to R11. GWP is the global warming potential, with CO2 as the reference gas set at 1; GWP measures, over a 100-year timeframe, the relative warming effect of various greenhouse gases compared to the mass of CO2 that would produce the same effect. Based on ODP and GWP, the industry divides fluorine refrigerants into four generations. China manages refrigerant production through quotas—annual supply and consumption are controlled by the state.

Fluorspar is the raw material for hydrofluoric acid, and hydrofluoric acid is a key raw material for refrigerants, so fluorspar resources are critical to refrigerant production, and price changes there easily pass through to refrigerants. Refrigerants can also serve as feedstock for downstream fluoropolymers—PVDF is needed for lithium batteries and photovoltaics, and PTFE has broad uses in integrated circuits and 5G telecom.

Depending on the halogenated hydrocarbons used in the reaction, industry can synthesize different refrigerants.

The second-generation refrigerant is mainly R22, made by reacting hydrofluoric acid with chloroform; producing 1 ton of R22 typically consumes 0.6 tons of hydrofluoric acid and 1.8 tons of chloroform.

The third generation mainly includes R32, R125, and R134a. Their unit consumption is: 0.8 tons hydrofluoric acid + 1.8 tons dichloromethane; 0.9 tons hydrofluoric acid + 1.4 tons tetrachloroethylene; and 0.88 tons hydrofluoric acid + 1.35 tons trichloroethylene, respectively.