Industrial Applications

ICL’s industrial and chemical know-how, as well as access to mineral resources, allows it to reach beyond agriculture. ICL's specialty products are used by a range of other industries, including pharmaceuticals, electronics, automotive, food and beverages, home furniture and appliances, building and construction, textiles, and utilities, as well as developing industries, such as energy storage and urban mining. \

Energy Storage

Various technologies have been developed for electrical energy storage applications around bromine and its derivatives. Realizing the opportunities that exist for innovative energy storage, ICL IP has set up an electrochemical laboratory in support of development activities for bromine-based energy storage solutions. ICL’s expertise with bromine is already being used by developers of such systems.

Innovative, Sustainable and Cost-Efficient Flame Retardants

Flame-retardants are designed to delay the ignition of an actual flame, extending the time between smoldering and the start of a fire. This crucial delay provides valuable moments for fire suppression, allowing for the fire to be extinguished more effectively or giving individuals a greater chance to reach safely.

Bromine is used extensively in flame-retardants and ICL supplies bromine and bromine derivatives for these life-saving products. ICL Industrial Products is making significant breakthroughs in the marketplace by expanding its sustainable and efficient flame-retardants portfolio. ICL is continuously developing safe, cost-efficient, and sustainable flame retardants, including innovative and environmentally friendly polymeric and reactive products used in electronics, electrical devices, passenger vehicles, fabrics, textiles, paints, ceramics, foams, lagging, upholstery, mattresses, carpets, curtains, blinds, and many other applications. Our innovative polymeric backbone based products provide superior fire safety benefits without potential environmental drawbacks.

ICL is a leading producer of flame-retardants widely used for building and construction materials. Our flame retardants are used to raise the threshold temperature at which a material ignites, reduce the rate at which materials burn, and minimize the spread of flames.

ICL offers more than fifty different flame-retardant solutions for various applications in the automotive and transportation industries, addressing the growing need for more fire safety. Focusing on Electrical and New Energy Vehicles, we offer solutions for highly demanding applications such as powertrains, charging stations, battery casings and covers, wires, cables, connectors, and relays. In mass transportation, our flame retardants are used principally in the cabin compartment in ceilings, walls, seats, trays, and other structures, including in the aircraft industry.

ICL manufactures a wide range of flame retardants for Electrical and Electronic (E&E) applications, preventing fatal electrical fire accidents and damage to property or the environment. Our flame retardants also meet or exceed the industry’s most stringent environmental guidelines and are used, among others, in circuits, insulation, casings, housings, and cables. Applications include TVs, computers, servers, white goods, printed circuit boards, connectors, relays and more.

Read more about the multiple applications of ICL’s fire retardants.

Resource Efficiency & Pollution Prevention

Metal Extraction & Urban Mining

ICL RD&I unit developed technologies for extracting metals from ores and other sources. The technology uses bromine as an oxidizer that can leach metals effectively from refractory ores without pre-oxidation treatment. The process with bromine doesn’t involve cyanide at any stage, and therefore has the potential to be more environmentally friendly. The technology is also applicable to extract metals from e-waste and batteries. As the electric vehicle market matures and batteries become even more prevalent, ICL expects this to be a new market in need of significant recycling of metals.

Microbial Solutions

Microbial contamination in water systems is a well-known phenomenon leading to biofilm, bio-corrosion, infectious diseases, poisonous metabolites & disruption of production processes.

ICL IP has been leading the development of Bromine based solutions for controlling microbial growth, disinfection and biofilm treatment and prevention. These solutions improve the energetic efficiency and heat transfer in industrial water systems, prevent corrosion and extend equipment operation life.

ICL IP has also developed (in collaboration with ICL’s open Innovation unit) a product that reduces the need for biocides with the help of signaling molecules.

BromoQuelⓇ The neutralization System that Takes Bromine Safety to the Next Level

Bromine use is essential for humanity and modern progress and is utilized in multiple applications and industries. Elemental Bromine is liquid at room temperature with high vapor pressure. It is a strong oxidizer and accidental exposure to it without protection may cause irritation, burns and poisoning, depending on the severity of exposure. Bromine is a hazardous material that requires a safety solution as leaks pose an environmental hazard.

ICL is the World’s Largest Producer of Bromine and Bromine-Based products

ICL has developed an innovative product for handling Bromine spill incidents. BromoQuel® offers a safe response and an immediate suppression of bromine vapor and liquid spills. BromoQuel® is ICL’s new and first-of-its-kind bromine neutralization system. The patented system allows industrial plants to execute simpler, quicker, and more effective first-responses to bromine leakage incidents, in order to minimize harmful emissions and increase employee safety.

Merquel® Pollution Prevention in Coal Power Plants

The Merquel® product line is based on inorganic bromides, which can be used to control mercury emissions from coal power plants. Bromine helps reduce air pollution in power plants. Mercury reaches the atmosphere during the coal combustion process and with a significant component of global power production still coming from coal, a considerable amount of mercury is released into the atmosphere.
ICL’s Merquel® bromine-based range of products react with mercury in the furnace flue gasses, effectively converting the volatile mercury into an ionic substance that can then be removed downstream. These “scrubber” units can effectively remove 90% of mercury from power plant emissions.

Agro Foils - Faster Degradation

The use of agricultural films is an established part of agriculture. The polymer films provide protection against weed growth, prevent the soil from cooling down and reduce the drying out of the substrate. This results in faster and better crop growth.

A disadvantage of these films is that they must be collected after harvesting or, in the case of biodegradable material, rot over a long period of time.

By adding fine powdered calcium or magnesium phosphate as a filler, it is possible to accelerate the decomposition process, so that the polymer material is decomposed in a shorter time.

The filler is added during the production of the film and is integrated into the thin polymer matrix. The decomposition process occurs much faster, and the assimilation and mineralization process is completed earlier.

Anti-Corrosion Products

ICL’s rust converters help to preserve steel and allow the re-use and restoration of rusted metal for a finished look vs. disposing of the rusted steel parts.

By complexation with iron oxide, our products create an impermeable black iron oxide layer which slows down any further asset corrosion.

Rust converters chemically bond to the rust and seal it. This is a low-cost solution to an expensive problem.