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 Cobalt at 9 month low .... but
http://www.formcap.com/s/CobaltNews.asp
Cobalt falls to 9-month low
LONDON (Metal-Pages) 17-July-08. The cobalt market has fallen to a nine-month low, trading at its lowest since November 2007, with market players saying they expect the price to fall further in the next few months.
The price for high grade material was quoted at a range of $ 38-40/lb and Russian material was quoted at $ 35-37/lb. BHP Billiton lowered its screen offer price this morning by $ 2/lb to $ 40/lb and Norislk Nickel also lowered its inidcative price for 99.3% cobalt today to $ 37.50/lb down $ 1.5/lb from $ 39/lb.
Traders reported that the cobalt market was trading at a $ 5/lb backwardation over the next three to six months.
A UK trader said: "The market is in a fairly stiff backwardation - there is business going on in ever decreasing numbers and the theme continues with the prices moving down and I think they are going to move down further. People are trying to find buyers, BHP is looking to sell, but consumers are waiting until they need metal. There is no weakness in demand, it's just that consumers are not going to buy until the price is lower still."
However, a more bullish trader said that while he anticipated further falls in the cobalt price in the next month, he expected the market to rally in September.
"The lower it goes the bigger the bounce, I wouldn't be surprised to see the price at $ 150/lb next year - I think it will catch everyone by surprise," he said.
He noted that Airbus has commissioned 40 billion dollars worth of aircraft over the next five years and that next year there will be demand for 5,000 tons of cobalt for hybrid cars.
end.
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Cheers
BP
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The hi-tech metal that could save the airline industry
The hi-tech metal that could save the airline industry
Publisher: Moneyweek.com
Author: Chris Mayer
In investing, the prospect of crisis has always been a sort of summons for me. It's like when I was a little boy and the ice cream truck's jingle sent me running for loose change on a hot summer day. These days, I'm just trying to get at goodies of a different sort -- profitable investment ideas, instead of ice cream bars.
And today's aviation industry has a big crisis on its hands. As a percentage of airline costs, fuel is now about 35% of the total -- up from only 13% at the start of the decade. It is the airline industry's No. 1 expense. The cost of fuel puts enormous pressure on the industry. At the same time, regulators are pushing for cleaner planes with fewer emissions.
"The price of oil has challenged and changed all realities for the aviation industry," says Tim Clark president of Emirates, a Dubai-based carrier. "This is the greatest crisis in aviation's history -- bigger than the Gulf wars, Sept. 11, SARS and past oil shocks."
If oil prices stay where they are and nothing else changes, the airline industry will lose about $6 billion this year, compared with a profit of $5.6 billion last year. Many airlines will be taking that familiar stroll into the bankruptcy courts. Globally, 24 airlines have already filed in just last the seven months.
The industry is trying -- and will try -- lots of different tactics to fend off elimination. One of these is to push for more fuel-efficient aircraft. And that is the opportunity for investors to cash in on this crisis.
It starts with the jet engine. Today's Wall Street Journal published "Jet Engine Makers Launch New War" -- all about the drive for new fuel-efficient engines. The piece notes that airlines worldwide want to replace their existing fleets with next-generation planes, not the current oil-guzzling models. The goal of the jet engine makers -- or rather, the mandate put to them by their customers -- is to deliver at least double-digit gains in fuel-efficiency.
As the WSJ reports: "Developing fuel-efficient engines requires the use of exotic alloys and ceramic coatings that can cope with internal engine temperatures that would be above the melting points of untreated metal components."
Enter cobalt. It's a tough metal with a high melting point of 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit. This higher melting point allows it to maintain its strength at higher temperatures than other metals can. Cobalt alloys have higher melting points than either nickel or iron alloys.
As a result, one of the main uses of cobalt is in superalloys such as those that jet engine makers need. In fact, the making of superalloys consumed about a quarter of global cobalt production, of which about 75% wound up in aircraft.
Cobalt would seem to have a nice backdrop of long-term demand. But it doesn't stop there. Defense spending is also on the rise globally. A Financial Times report on aerospace notes that India, China, Brazil and certain Middle Eastern countries are all upping their defense spending. India alone may spend $40 billion in 2009.
Cobalt is an important part of all that, too. In fact, the U.S. and the Soviet Union used to stockpile cobalt for defense purposes. Those stockpiles are long gone, but the role cobalt plays in defense still exists.
As exciting as the aerospace angle is, a potentially bigger market could be batteries for hybrid cars. As I pointed out in the last issue, there are 5-10 pounds of cobalt in a typical hybrid car battery. Hybrid car sales will probably hit 500,000 cars this year. And that is growing rapidly.
Kitco recently noted that cobalt holds an electric charge better than almost any other metal. That makes it hard to replace, even at $50 per pound. "And the current electric batteries work so well," Kitco notes, "[that] there is little incentive to change their structure (and other metal prices have skyrocketed, as well as cobalt -- nothing is cheap anymore)."
With the failure of banks and the troubles of big financials such as Fannie Mae, cobalt seems a nice place to be. A while ago, I recommended a "cobalt play" to the readers of my investment service, Mayer's Special Situations. The name of the stocks is OM Group (NYSE: OMG). I should warn you that the stock is a bit speculative. But let me share a few of the particulars...
OMG carries a seemingly absurd valuation. It's not often that you find profitable and growing companies with no net debt trading for big discounts to book value. The specialty chemical industry -- a tribe to which OMG belongs -- is undergoing heavy consolidation. Companies are getting bought out left and right. Dow Chemical bought Rohm and Haas for a 74% premium. And then Ashland came along and bought Hercules for a 38% premium.
Companies that make low-margin chemicals are looking to beef up on companies that make high-margin, or specialty, chemicals. Because OMG is cheap and very profitable, it has to be on someone's radar. I hope that it doesn't get bought out. I think we'll do better holding the stock. But the deal-happy scene in the chemical business is another potential backstop of value here.
Hard to believe that anyone could buy all of OMG for anything less than at least book -- which is $36 per share. And even that would bring howls of protest. After all, the stock was in the $50s for much of the past year. We will see.
In any event, let's bring this back around to the aviation crisis. A familiar theme in the pages of my letters over the years has been this Templetonian notion of focusing on the opportunities that problems present. The late great John Templeton made this idea a key component of his investment -- and life -- philosophy.
The high price of oil is a big problem for many industries.
So if you have a good way to mitigate the high price of oil, you have a business. I think the big winners over the next few years are going to be those companies that have a solution to the high price of oil. Those companies have products that other people will pay up for, because fuel-efficiency is a must. The aerospace industry must become more fuel-efficient.
Cobalt alloys will be a big part of that trend.
This article was written by Chris Mayer for Whiskey and Gunpowder
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4 Commodities Ready To Shock Investors- Cobalt
Extract:
4 Commodities Ready To Shock Investors – #4: Demand Surging, Supply Uncertain for Cobalt
As if the oil price shock that has thrown the world into turmoil isn’t bad enough, there’s reason to believe at least four more commodity price shocks may be headed straight for investors’ portfolios.
Last up: cobalt, a commodity that attracts surprisingly little media attention, given how uncertain its supply is in the face of surging demand.
To read the full article go to:
http://energytechstocks.com/wp/?p=1496
Cheers
BP
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Cobalt Typifies The Bull Market
For anyone interested
http://www.formcap.com/s/CobaltNews.asp
Cobalt Typifies The Bull Market
Publisher: minesite
Author: Rob Davies
Cobalt is one of those metals that everyone is familiar with in a vague sort of way. Most are dimly aware that is probably used in high technology applications, but would struggle to name a primary cobalt mine or producer. And as for so many speciality metals, the cobalt market is actually quite a small market. Metals consultancy CRU estimates that the total market in 2007 was for only 60,000 tonnes.
But that demand is surprisingly widespread. One third of consumption goes into what is deemed environmental applications, such as solar panels and fuel cells. A bit more, about 36 per cent, is used for industrial applications such as drill bits and ball bearings. Surprisingly turbine blades and jet engines only accounts for 22 per cent of cobalt use. The remaining nine per cent is consumed in the electronics industry in things such as hard drives, memory chips and cell phones. That is a pretty widespread range of uses in what can loosely be called technological applications. Beyond that, cobalt is being tested for use in products such as lithium ion batteries and hydrogen storage systems. If the world is going to continue increasing its use of technology then it is hard not to believe that cobalt has a big future ahead of it. That's why consumption of this metal is expected to rise to 75,000 tonnes by 2010 and to 100,000 tonnes by 2012. In mining terms those dates are not very far away.
So who will supply this metal? Formation Capital is building an integrated mine and processing facility in Idaho with a total contained cobalt resource of 13 million pounds or nearly 6,000 tonnes.[*] Formation clearly hopes to be part of the equation. Right now supply comes from a variety of sources, mostly as by-product of nickel and copper mining, though there is one primary mine in Morocco and one in the US. Much will come out of the Congolese copperbelt, mostly as by-product.
But the Cobalt Development Institute, a not-for-profit industry body designed to promote cobalt, estimates that these various sources generated about 53,000 tonnes of refined cobalt in 2007. That leaves a pretty big gap between what is currently produced and what will be needed in two years time. Not only will be the demand for cobalt be rising sharply, but the demand for the highest level of purity, 99.999%, is forecast to rise even more rapidly. Only about 5,500 tonnes of out of total cobalt metal production of about 23,000 tonnes is suitable for critical superalloy applications. It's estimated that the industry needs to provide another 1,000 tonnes a year of high purity cobalt to match demand.
Only two companies today provide this high quality material, Vale and Xstrata, the new owners of the two Canadian nickel miners Inco and LionOre. More supply will be provided as by-products from new mines in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo. But there is substantial risk to these, especially in terms of timing. Although US$40 a pound might look expensive now, if these projections are right, then US$40 could look like a bargain in a few years time. There may be some speculation in some precious and base metals, but cobalt is so specialised that it would be difficult for traders to build up a large position in this metal. This fundamental situation suggests that, despite what some pundits are saying, the end of the commodity boom for this metal is not in sight just yet.
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This could change the way we view energy supply!
MIT splits water with sunlight
Publisher: The Chemical Engineer, London, UK
Author: Claudia Flavell-White
SPLITTING WATER INTO hydrogen and oxygen at room temperature using solar power, under benign conditions and without the need for expensive catalysts: it's the holy grail of the hydrogen economy. Now, researchers at the MIT claim they found it.
Writing in the 31 July issue of Science, MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera and postdoctoral fellow Matthew Kanan say they have developed a practical way of generating plentiful supplies of hydrogen gas to power cars, houses etc. Their discovery hinges on a novel cobalt/phosphate catalyst that forms a film on the anode which in turn cleaves the oxygen from water when a current runs through it. A conventional platinum catalyst produces hydrogen at the cathode. The process works at room temperature, uses water at neutral pH, and is easy to set up, raising hopes that it will be straightforward to develop and scale up, and hopefully economic to run at large scale.
The researchers are still working to understand the exact mechanism of catalysis at the anode. They know that cobalt ions and phosphate ions were observed to form a thin dark film on the indium tin oxide anode, and that it was this film that appeared to act as the catalyst -- but whether it is Co3+ or Co4+ ions that eventually pull electrons from water to leave behind oxygen atoms and H+ protons is still not entirely certain. However, they have observed that the cobalt phosphate film catalyst appears to regenerate itself, which would make it infinitely more practical for everyday commercial application.
While it is of course already possible to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, current technologies consume vast amounts of power and a lot of expensive platinum to catalyse the process, and operate in a harshly alkaline environment. By contrast, Nocera and Kanan's set-up works on standard water and even appears to tolerate some impurities.
Interestingly, their breakthrough is the result of Nocera questioning some basic assumptions of catalysis. Frustrated by his lack of progress, Nocera decided to abandon the usual rule to use very stable catalysts that aren't corroded by the reactions they catalyse. By contrast, the cobalt phosphorous film that acts as catalyst breaks down as soon as the current is cut -- but it reassembles as soon as power is restored.
"This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," says Nocera. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."
Other experts concur. James Barber, biochemistry professor and photosynthesis expert at Imperial College London, says: "This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind. The importance of [Nocera and Kanan's] discovery cannot be overstated."
Nocera says that in ten years' time, efficient, effective photovoltaic cells could provide all the necessary power for household during the day, using excess energy to generate hydrogen for household fuel cells that would provide power over night. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past, he believes.
Before this happens, plenty of work remains to be done. The efficiency and speed of the oxygen-production has to be speeded up. Then the whole arrangement needs to be connected to an energy source -- preferably wind or solar -- on one end and an electricity-producing fuel cell on the other. Finally, scientists hope to find an alternative for platinum both at the cathode and to catalyse the reverse reaction of hydrogen and oxygen into water: with platinum costing over $2000 per troy ounce, a cheaper replacement would go a long way to making both the water reactor and the fuel cell affordable at scale.
The solution to at least the second half of this final challenge may be closer at hand than thought: a materials scientists in Australia says that a combination of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) and Gore-tex -- a polymer widely used for water-repellent outdoor and sports clothing -- could replace platinum as the fuel cell catalyst of choice. PEDOT is a conducting polymer which, coated onto a Gore-tex membrane, is just as effective as a fuel cell catalyst as platinum. And unlike platinum, the polymer catalyst is not subject to carbon monoxide poisoning, which can occur in platinum-catalysed fuel cells.
Doug MacFarlane, professor of chemistry at the Australian Centre for Electromaterials Science, says: "The cost of the platinum component alone of current fuel cells for a small car with a 100kW electric engine is more than the total cost of an 100kW gasoline engine. Also current annual world production of platinum is only sufficient for about 3 million 100kW vehicles, less than one-twentieth of the current annual global production of vehicles." In other words, if we ever want to replace conventional cars with fuel cell models, finding an alternative to the platinum catalyst is a must.
-END-
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 Originally Posted by BAP
MIT splits water with sunlight
Publisher: The Chemical Engineer, London, UK
Author: Claudia Flavell-White
SPLITTING WATER INTO hydrogen and oxygen at room temperature using solar power, under benign conditions and without the need for expensive catalysts: it's the holy grail of the hydrogen economy. Now, researchers at the MIT claim they found it.
Writing in the 31 July issue of Science, MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera and postdoctoral fellow Matthew Kanan say they have developed a practical way of generating plentiful supplies of hydrogen gas to power cars, houses etc. Their discovery hinges on a novel cobalt/phosphate catalyst that forms a film on the anode which in turn cleaves the oxygen from water when a current runs through it. A conventional platinum catalyst produces hydrogen at the cathode. The process works at room temperature, uses water at neutral pH, and is easy to set up, raising hopes that it will be straightforward to develop and scale up, and hopefully economic to run at large scale.
The researchers are still working to understand the exact mechanism of catalysis at the anode. They know that cobalt ions and phosphate ions were observed to form a thin dark film on the indium tin oxide anode, and that it was this film that appeared to act as the catalyst -- but whether it is Co3+ or Co4+ ions that eventually pull electrons from water to leave behind oxygen atoms and H+ protons is still not entirely certain. However, they have observed that the cobalt phosphate film catalyst appears to regenerate itself, which would make it infinitely more practical for everyday commercial application.
While it is of course already possible to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, current technologies consume vast amounts of power and a lot of expensive platinum to catalyse the process, and operate in a harshly alkaline environment. By contrast, Nocera and Kanan's set-up works on standard water and even appears to tolerate some impurities.
Interestingly, their breakthrough is the result of Nocera questioning some basic assumptions of catalysis. Frustrated by his lack of progress, Nocera decided to abandon the usual rule to use very stable catalysts that aren't corroded by the reactions they catalyse. By contrast, the cobalt phosphorous film that acts as catalyst breaks down as soon as the current is cut -- but it reassembles as soon as power is restored.
"This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," says Nocera. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."
Other experts concur. James Barber, biochemistry professor and photosynthesis expert at Imperial College London, says: "This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind. The importance of [Nocera and Kanan's] discovery cannot be overstated."
Nocera says that in ten years' time, efficient, effective photovoltaic cells could provide all the necessary power for household during the day, using excess energy to generate hydrogen for household fuel cells that would provide power over night. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past, he believes.
Before this happens, plenty of work remains to be done. The efficiency and speed of the oxygen-production has to be speeded up. Then the whole arrangement needs to be connected to an energy source -- preferably wind or solar -- on one end and an electricity-producing fuel cell on the other. Finally, scientists hope to find an alternative for platinum both at the cathode and to catalyse the reverse reaction of hydrogen and oxygen into water: with platinum costing over $2000 per troy ounce, a cheaper replacement would go a long way to making both the water reactor and the fuel cell affordable at scale.
The solution to at least the second half of this final challenge may be closer at hand than thought: a materials scientists in Australia says that a combination of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) and Gore-tex -- a polymer widely used for water-repellent outdoor and sports clothing -- could replace platinum as the fuel cell catalyst of choice. PEDOT is a conducting polymer which, coated onto a Gore-tex membrane, is just as effective as a fuel cell catalyst as platinum. And unlike platinum, the polymer catalyst is not subject to carbon monoxide poisoning, which can occur in platinum-catalysed fuel cells.
Doug MacFarlane, professor of chemistry at the Australian Centre for Electromaterials Science, says: "The cost of the platinum component alone of current fuel cells for a small car with a 100kW electric engine is more than the total cost of an 100kW gasoline engine. Also current annual world production of platinum is only sufficient for about 3 million 100kW vehicles, less than one-twentieth of the current annual global production of vehicles." In other words, if we ever want to replace conventional cars with fuel cell models, finding an alternative to the platinum catalyst is a must.
-END-
It didn't take the T.O.D to refute those claims
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4378#more
for your pleasure.
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Member
Cobalt down
Down..Down.....Down 63% in a Month
http://cobalt.bhpbilliton.com/
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