[TheForge] Acetylene shortage

[James Binnion]

Don't know if you all have heard about this yet but there was a massive fire and explosion in a plant that produces calcium carbide a week or so ago. Well it turns out that that plant produced about 30% of the acetylene in the US (acetylene is produced by adding calcium carbide to water). So welding supply companies are rationing acetylene. When this surfaced on another list at first I thought no way that one company would have that much of the market in acetylene as it is mostly used to make chemical precursors to plastics not for welding. And further more the majority of it is produced from cracking petroleum or processing from coal. But thanks to the moving off shore of many major industries the capacity to produce acetylene has suffered as it is much cheaper to make the plastics in China they are now the major producer of acetylene in the world and our production of acetylene has tapered off so that now one processing plant makes a third of the acetylene used in the US. So don't be surprised if you are limited to one tank and asked to prove that empty tank comes from your supplier. As of right now my supplier will not fill customer owned tanks stamped with other companies names and is limiting larger accounts to only 50% of their normal purchases but one can still get a single tank filled or exchanged. And OBTW the price has gone up too. 


James Binnion
jbin at well.com