Neon

[Terry Bites]

The Ukraine is one of the worlds biggest suppliers of Neon. A vital chemical in chip production. More chipaggedon fun.

[PlainName]

The Ukraine

Ahem. I believe the official name for it is 'Ukraine'. Pays to get this right at the moment

[tooki]

While this is true, it’s not because of special availability of a natural resource. Rather, simply existing production capacity. (Apparently, neon is simply extracted from the air.)

[isometrik]

[Benta]

The Ukraine

Ahem. I believe the official name for it is 'Ukraine'. Pays to get this right at the moment

Why? He's in the Britain.

[Zero999]

The Ukraine

Ahem. I believe the official name for it is 'Ukraine'. Pays to get this right at the moment

Why? He's in the Britain.

Which is part of the UK, formally part of the EU.

[jonpaul]

All noble gasses are petroleum and gaz production and refining by-products, Texas ,Alaska has huge untapped resources, frozen by USA Biden Administration control by eco radicals and climate change religion.

Helium, argon néon prices are booming,

Bon courage

Jon

[daqq]

While this is true, it’s not because of special availability of a natural resource. Rather, simply existing production capacity. (Apparently, neon is simply extracted from the air.)

Not sure if 'simply' is the right word. While gas distillation is a straightforward process, distilling it to several nines of purity in industrial quantities might not be so simple. If nothing else, creating the machinery, tweaking the process and gaining the knowledge will take time.

All noble gasses are petroleum and gaz production and refining by-products,

No. Helium yes (though byproduct is a tad misleading), the others no.

[Cerebus]

All noble gasses are petroleum and gaz production and refining by-products, Texas ,Alaska has huge untapped resources, frozen by USA Biden Administration control by eco radicals and climate change religion.

Helium, argon néon prices are booming,

Bon courage

Jon

No, as someone has already said in this thread, commercial Neon production is by fractionating air. In fact only one of the noble gasses is commercially produced as a byproduct of the petroleum and natural gas industry, Helium. Argon, Krypton and Xenon are commercially produced by fractionating air. Radon is a byproduct of uranium processing. If you want any Oganesson you're out of luck as there is no commercial production and so far only 5 or 6 atoms of it have been detected to have existed.

[Berni]

Helium does appear in natural gas because it is procured by radioactive decay of unstable isotopes in rocks. But other noble gasses are mostly just floating around in the air.

Everything from Argon to Xenon is produced from air separation.

The issue is that the process of doing this is not easy. They can't be chemically separated due to being noble gases, so fractional distillation has to be done (thus means rather extreme cold temperatures). Most air separation plants are only interested in the oxygen and nitrogen (end even then not to a very high purity) so the other leftover stuff is just thrown away. They can put in a bit more effort to also get Argon out of it since there is quite a bit of it in the air (quite a useful shielding gas). But separating out the more rare gases down the periodic table is more difficult. Getting it to the 99.9...etc % purity is even more difficult. So producing this on a large enough scale to be profitable requires a lot of big expensive specialized equipment and specialized people that know how to run it.

If they do start to run out of chip fab grade neon gas the price will eventually get high enough for other air separation plants to consider putting in the effort to turn those waste gases into pure neon.

[SiliconWizard]

Ukraine and Russia are also major suppliers of fertilizers, so that's probably a bigger source of concern than neon, to be honest. The man's gotta eat.

[CatalinaWOW]

To give more meat to the arguments presented previously, the big markets for liquified gases are nitrogen, oxygen and argon.   All of those boil in the 77 to 90 Kelvin range.  Neon boils at 27, a whole different world of cryo.  Another whole layer on the normal product of the common gases.  Then add that Neon is only about 0.002 percent of the atmosphere (compare to Argon at 0.9 percent).

You really have to want it to get it at all, and then getting it really pure kicks it up another couple notches.

I wonder if the original plant investment in the Ukraine came from the Soviet era when market forces weren't predominant in deciding what to do?

[Sal Ammoniac]

The Ukraine

Ahem. I believe the official name for it is 'Ukraine'. Pays to get this right at the moment

Why? He's in the Britain.

Which is part of the UK, formally part of the EU.

Actually, the UK is formerly part of the EU.

[Zero999]

The Ukraine

Ahem. I believe the official name for it is 'Ukraine'. Pays to get this right at the moment

Why? He's in the Britain.

Which is part of the UK, formally part of the EU.

Actually, the UK is formerly part of the EU.

Read my post again.

Ukraine and Russia are also major suppliers of fertilizers, so that's probably a bigger source of concern than neon, to be honest. The man's gotta eat.

And wheat. I really hope the farmers are sowing, rather than fighting, otherwise there will be food shortages.

[dmills]

Neon boils at 27, a whole different world of cryo.  Another whole layer on the normal product of the common gases. 

So whatever does **not** condense in the normal high volume cryo plant is probably mostly neon?

Sure you have to take that dribble of cold gas and do a whole load of post processing, but getting at the raw (concentrated) feedstock does not feel like it should be a problem for Air Liquide or BOC of whoever if the incentive is there to add the post processing magic.

I think we have bigger issues, lots of H-B capacity was in Ukraine and Russia, and Ammonia is sort of important.

[IanB]

Read my post again.

Reading your post again doesn't change anything that I can see.

The UK is formally NOT part of the EU (Brexit happened, yes?)

[SiliconWizard]

Read my post again.

Reading your post again doesn't change anything that I can see.

The UK is formally NOT part of the EU (Brexit happened, yes?)

I'm sure this was just a slip. (Freudian slip? )
And that said, the fact the UK is not in the EU anymore doesn't change much when it comes to the impact of the current conflict on them.

[LaserSteve]

Ukrainian and to a lessor extent Russian, Neon comes to the US as large liquid cryo tanks.  Most of the actual cost is the distribution tank, the tank pressure test, packing, purity testing, and senseless hazmat fees.  Three years ago I was given a number for the raw cost of the actual refined gas as a little more then a Dollar a Litre at STP,,  prior to packing;

 One of the things that really shocked me, was when my distributer told me he would buy the raw liquid here, ship it to Ukraine  for purification, then bring it back.

In my case, isotopic separation is sometimes needed as well;  which is not difficult but is very time consuming. That gets really expensive, but can lead to ~ 20% increase in laser performance.
In the case of Neon , isotope separation is a thermal process.. 

If this were peacetime I would post links to a beautiful web site explaining how its done. But not now.  Suffice it to say you can nix the idea of the  "Large Ex Soviet Plant"

Steve

[westfw]

$1/l of gas sounds pretty expensive to me.  I believe 1l is about 1g…

[BrokenYugo]

Given the purity a buck a gram doesn't sound bad to me. I don't think this is the sort of neon used in signs and indicator lights, I would think that only needs to be pure enough to give the right color.

[Cerebus]

$1/l of gas sounds pretty expensive to me.  I believe 1l is about 1g…

Ah, I see we've forgotten high school physics. 1 mole of any gas occupies 22.41 litres at STP (Avogadro's law + ideal gas law), neon has an atomic weight of 20.1797(6) so it's going to be closer to 900mg.

I'm quite surprised to have remembered that 22.41 litres because I don't think I've ever had a practical use for the figure in the 50 odd years since I learnt it.

[Sal Ammoniac]

$1/l of gas sounds pretty expensive to me.  I believe 1l is about 1g…

Ah, I see we've forgotten high school physics. 1 mole of any gas occupies 22.41 litres at STP (Avogadro's law + ideal gas law), neon has an atomic weight of 20.1797(6) so it's going to be closer to 900mg.

I'm quite surprised to have remembered that 22.41 litres because I don't think I've ever had a practical use for the figure in the 50 odd years since I learnt it.

Ah, but 1g is about 900mg.

[LaserSteve]

Lamp mixes are 99.9995 or better purity. A trace of Argon can be added to form a Penning mixture to lower the ignition voltage. For neon indicator lamps or trigger tubes used in control circuits a trace of Kr-85 can be added to aid in firing in the dark.

Any trace of oxygen, nitrogen, or hydrogen is bad news in lighting.  Mixes for flourescent lamps at one time had a trace of nitrogen to cause heating of the lamp wall to aide in vaporizing the mercury in winter.  Nixie mixes could contain a tiny amount of mercury vapor to reduce electrode erosion by sputtering.j

It is difficult to buy neon in less then five or six  nines purity unless you order a blend.

The slightest amount of nitrogen raises the firing voltage and switches emission to a more or less dim violet color.

Steve

[PlainName]

$1/l of gas sounds pretty expensive to me.  I believe 1l is about 1g…

Ah, I see we've forgotten high school physics. 1 mole of any gas occupies 22.41 litres at STP (Avogadro's law + ideal gas law), neon has an atomic weight of 20.1797(6) so it's going to be closer to 900mg.

I'm quite surprised to have remembered that 22.41 litres because I don't think I've ever had a practical use for the figure in the 50 odd years since I learnt it.

Ah, but 1g is about 900mg.

Sorry, but 

[Cerebus]

$1/l of gas sounds pretty expensive to me.  I believe 1l is about 1g…

Ah, I see we've forgotten high school physics. 1 mole of any gas occupies 22.41 litres at STP (Avogadro's law + ideal gas law), neon has an atomic weight of 20.1797(6) so it's going to be closer to 900mg.

I'm quite surprised to have remembered that 22.41 litres because I don't think I've ever had a practical use for the figure in the 50 odd years since I learnt it.

Ah, but 1g is about 900mg.

Ah, a man who only ever uses E6 series resistors.