An update on the Strait of Hormuz & potential explosives at an Antarctic base

Introduction and News Roundup

Mariana Kneppers

The US and Iran have recently signed a form of agreement to temporarily reopen the Strait of Hormuz for shipping. But will this be enough to ease costs of resources, or has too much damage already been done?

And representatives from New Zealand have warned about the possible presence of explosive materials inside the Antarctic laboratories left behind by Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton. We explain the chemistry underpinning the substances.

I’m Mariana Kneppers, Chemistry World Science Media Producer, and this is the Chemical Breakdown.

We’ll be diving deeper into these stories shortly, but first, let’s take a look at this week’s news from the Chemistry World website.

Europe could spend more than 100 billion euros, or 85 billion pounds, a year remediating PFAS pollution while still capturing less than 2% of current emissions. Researchers say the findings reinforce the need to prioritise reducing PFAS use and releases at source rather than trying to clean up contamination after it occurs.

Recent work could transform how oil is processed by using membranes to separate hydrocarbons in crude oil. These membrane materials are scalable, work under industrial conditions, and could reduce energy costs and carbon dioxide emissions compared with conventional methods of fractional distillation.

The UK government has unveiled a voluntary charter that aims to better support women in research by ensuring paid family leave, flexible working, and tougher action on workplace harassment. Over 60 universities and institutes have currently signed the charter, including the Wellcome Trust, UK Research and Innovation, and the Royal Society.

And researchers in the US have shown how protein sheaths, designed by a deep learning algorithm, can be used to solubilise cell membrane proteins without significantly affecting their structure or function. The technology should make it much easier to study membrane proteins and could potentially lead to the development of new drugs or vaccines.

You can find these stories and more online. Just visit chemistryworld.com for more of the latest news in the chemical sciences.

The Strait of Hormuz and Global Chemical Supply Chains

Mariana Kneppers

It’s been five months since the initial blockage of the Strait of Hormuz. It all began on the 28th of February when the US and Israel launched an air war against Iran who responded by forbidding passage through the Strait.

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most important maritime choke points for supply of global energy and commodities, facilitating the transport of approximately 20% of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas.

While many of us have seen the cost of fuel rise, the strait is also responsible for exporting a number of chemical commodities and resources, impacting fields including technology, agriculture, plastics and metals.

Most recently, the US and Iran signed an agreement to reopen the strait for a period of time. But will this be enough to ease costs for the rest of us, or has long-term damage to these industries already been done?

Here to discuss today’s stories are Chemistry World’s business editor, Phillip Broadwith, and intern Frances Briggs. Hello to you both.

Phillip Broadwith

Hi, Mariana.

Mariana Kneppers

Lovely to have you. Phillip, let’s start with you. We haven’t had a chance to discuss the closure of the Strait in great length yet on the podcast, so maybe let’s just review some things. I listed some stuff from the beginning, but what supply chains in particular are facing the brunt, you know, outside of fuel and oil?

Phillip Broadwith

So the biggest things are oil and gas, but then there’s other petroleum products, particularly for chemicals, one of the most important ones is naphtha, which is a fraction of crude oil, but that’s used as a feedstock to make chemicals.

And it would normally be exported across Southeast Asia and into China to feed their chemicals industries where it would be made into plastics and base chemicals and then all the way down various kind of supply chains into all sorts of chemicals.

Another one is helium. Helium often occurs in the same places as natural gas and one of the biggest producers of helium in the world is in Qatar, so that’s behind the strait.

So 1/3 of the world’s helium supply was kind of cut off, including one of only two places where we can produce very high-grade helium used for semiconductor manufacturing.

And then on from that, you know, gas is used in the Gulf area to make things like ammonia for fertiliser. You’re also extracting sulfur to make sulfuric acid, which would also go into fertiliser, and other things.

So there’s this impact on fertiliser prices, which have gone really high, which means that some farmers perhaps have decided not to use as much fertiliser.

So we might see like a later impact in terms of food production yields and food prices and that kind of thing. So the impacts are very broad.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah, absolutely. It’s far beyond, I think, the initial concern that everyone had of oil and gas and all that stuff. Now, in terms of these other knock-on effects, have we already been seeing some of these prices rise or shortages, kind of across the board?

Phillip Broadwith

Yeah, absolutely. Some of it has been buffered a little bit in terms of chemicals, because for the last several years, China has been building up huge amounts of capacity to make particularly ethylene polymers.

So there were quite a lot of places where they had quite a lot of stock that they could use up.

But definitely prices went up. And because of the uncertainty of how long this is going to go, a lot of plants ended up being shut down because they ran out of feedstock.

Or if they’re in the Gulf, they’ve got feedstock, but they’ve got nowhere to put their products. There’s no ships, there’s no storage. So they had to shut down.

Shutting down is a really, really big decision for these massive chemical plants because once they’ve shut down, it’s really difficult to restart them.

It’s really expensive. You need specialist engineers to come. And there’s not very many of those specialist engineers.

So when you’ve got lots of plants wanting to restart at the same time, there’s basically going to be a queue to get the people.

And then some of these plants have also been damaged by the bombing and attacks in the war.

So one of the biggest gas plants in Qatar, Ras Laffan, the owners have said it might take three to five years for that to get back up to full capacity.

But lots of other methanol plants in Iran also damaged. And some of those plants will need specialist parts, specialist equipment that will take months to years to become available, even if they wanted to restart.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah, so it’s not just the closure of the strait itself. It’s, you know, this is a war zone, so you’ve got lots of damaged buildings, damaged facilities, and the resources. People aren’t really coming into the country at the moment.

So yeah, it does sound like there’s going to be a lot more thought behind this besides just reopening the strait. There’s quite a few consequences.

Phillip Broadwith

Yeah, and a lot of the engineers who work there, a lot of the senior engineers and the operational staff are expats. They’re not natives of the area.

They’re coming in particularly from Europe and from South Asia. They’re skilled jobs. They pay pretty well, but a lot of people went home when there was a war and the plants had shut down.

But you have to get those people back, either the same people or you would try new people.

That, I mean, getting those people back may or may not be an issue. The jobs pay really well. People will move for them as long as they think it’s going to be safe.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah, but there needs to be stability and we don’t know when that stability is going to come, right.

Frances Briggs

I’m imagining that every time this kind of thing happens where you have one area that is leading to a supply chain issue, it brings up those conversations of should we have other areas where we produce these?

Is that like, what is the general consensus on that kind of conversation? I don’t know if that’s too big of a question.

Phillip Broadwith

Well, I mean, yeah, so most of these things are produced globally, right? There’s other places where they do.

And one of the effects of this is that the US, where there is relatively abundant and relatively cheap feedstock for chemicals, slightly different kind of feedstock.

So shale gas produces ethane, which you can make ethylene and other chemicals from.

So there needs to be reconfiguration of plants sometimes, or some plants run differently.

You can’t just put ethane into a naphtha plant and produce the same stuff.

But there definitely has been a bit of a shift of people kind of going, well, instead of getting this from the Middle East, we’re going to get stuff from the US instead.

And those changes will potentially last longer. People aren’t necessarily just going to switch straight back when there’s stuff available from the Gulf again.

Mariana Kneppers

I didn’t realise that people were getting, you know, the replacement supply is now coming from the US. So this whole war benefits the US quite a lot.

So Phillip, what is the latest update then? What are the stipulations of this latest agreement?

I think it’s a two-month agreement, right? But like, how’s that even enacted? You know, like what ships are going to come first? I mean, has there been a lot of chat about that?

Phillip Broadwith

Well, a lot of it is unclear. So the memorandum of understanding was signed on the 17th of July, which said they would try to make sure that the ships could go through the straits safely for a period of 60 days while they hammer out the final agreement.

But since then, we’ve had airstrikes from both sides on ships. And so both sides are saying that the other side has broken its ceasefire agreement.

There’s also been stuff still going on in Israel and Lebanon. So it’s very, very unclear how that happens.

But if we assume that it is going to reopen, you then decide, well, there’s lots of ships waiting. Which ones go out first?

The priority is probably oil and gas and then maybe naphtha and feedstock and things like fertiliser are a bit lower down the priority list and helium a bit lower down the priority list as well.

So this could be some negotiation about which of those go through.

Some of the sources that we spoke to for our coverage suggested that the ships that are kind of more linked to the Iranian fleet or servicing Iranian shops will go out more quickly.

But the other ones, there might be some kind of considerations around whether they can get the insurance to cover their fleets and what their appetite for risk is.

Mariana Kneppers

Given that oil is probably going to be given priority, but we still need these other chemicals around. Have other institutions or other organisations found ways of maybe repurposing chemicals? Is that even an option?

Phillip Broadwith

The helium shortage, for example, it’s quite bad for semiconductors because they use, they don’t tend to recycle that helium very much.

But for things like in places like universities and hospitals where we’re talking about NMR spectrometers, MRI machines, a lot of the bigger facilities now have tended to be putting in recycling over the last few years so that they can capture the helium that comes off their machines, recompress it, re-liquefy it and reuse it.

So Mason, one of our correspondents, spoke to some of the universities recently and they said, you know, at the moment it’s not really an issue for us.

But if it carries on for a long time, eventually they are going to need more helium supplies.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah. So it does have people rethinking their supply chains. And it’s good that there are alternatives out there.

Something that we did speak about briefly on a different episode was how people are kind of switching more to electric cars, for example. So, you know, to stay away from.

Phillip Broadwith

That’s a very slow transition, but it does affect the way people think. Yeah, it definitely affects the way.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah, I think it’s definitely made people reconsider our reliance on other countries or I guess other resources that aren’t being produced within our own country, if that makes sense.

Phillip Broadwith

For the last few decades, there’s been this great push towards globalisation, you know, produce stuff where it’s cheap and then move it around.

And now there’s a little bit of a kind of going back to actually some things we kind of need to have a bit more control over what we’re doing, because otherwise they end up being used as political levers.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah, or maybe even just diversifying the sources, because that way, if one option’s knocked out, you’re not completely crippled, right?

You have different sources of things, but maybe depending on the resource, that may not be necessarily possible, but definitely gets you thinking.

Phillip, one last question for you. When do you think we will see a final deal?

I mean, that is a bit of crystal ball gazing. I don’t know if anybody knows, but is that something that people have been speaking about at all? Do we have any confidence it’s coming soon?

Phillip Broadwith

Well, I think one thing we can definitely say is not to necessarily believe Donald Trump when he says the deal’s done, because he’s said that a lot of times and it isn’t.

But this is a very delicate negotiation. I can see it taking all of that two months and possibly more. I don’t know.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah, well, we’ll see. Hopefully this, you know, comes to a conclusion sooner rather than later.

But in the meantime, it has us all thinking about where to get our resources and recycling what we do have.

So, well, thanks so much, everyone.

Tiny Matters Podcast Message

Mariana Kneppers

And a quick message from our friends at the Tiny Matters podcast.

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New episodes every Wednesday wherever you listen to podcasts.

Explosive Chemicals in Antarctic Exploration Huts

Mariana Kneppers

A report from New Zealand has warned of the possible presence of explosive chemicals in the historic huts of explorers Ernest Shackleton and Robert Scott.

The huts, located on Cape Evans and Cape Royds, served as laboratories during their expeditions in the early 1900s.

The sites contain a number of chemicals and artefacts left over from the expeditions and are visited by tourists each year, sparking concern over the safety of the sites.

The chemical in question is picric acid crystal, which can be explosive if disturbed. But why is this chemical present and what can be done?

Frances, set the scene for us. Why were these structures set up in the first place?

Frances Briggs

So both of these huts were the bases for Ernest Shackleton and Robert Scott.

The Robert Scott hut is on Cape Evans and the Shackleton one at Cape Royds and they were constructed within three years of each other when both of these Antarctic explorers were exploring the Antarctic and going out on these really quite impressive expeditions at the time, looking to find that South Pole.

So yeah, and I should say that Shackleton, his mission was slightly different. He and his team climbed Mount Erebus and they’d made quite a few science contributions, but it was ever so slightly different to what Scott was doing.

Mariana Kneppers

So these were basically, you know, they arrived in Antarctica and this is where they set up their base, is that right?

Frances Briggs

Yeah, exactly that. So they were living here, they were working here, they were doing small scientific experiments basically, but also just living there whilst they waited for the right moment to go on these long expeditions to find the South Pole.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah, of course. I mean, I imagine just being in Antarctica, the weather is quite extreme. So to have a base like that where you’re living, doing your experiments, it’s kind of everything happens in that one space.

So quite a cool historic area. And it’s amazing that they’re still kind of set up.

Frances Briggs

I think part of the reason that they’re in such good condition is the fact that it is so cold and people aren’t there to disturb these huts.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah, it’s not a very heavily trafficked area in Antarctica, is it?

Frances Briggs

Exactly, no. There’s like 2,000 people who visit them each year, both huts combined.

Mariana Kneppers

Okay, so the main use of that space now is as a historical site, is that right?

Frances Briggs

Yeah, so now it’s just set up for visitors. They’re just there as kind of historical archives of that time and those explorations, but they’re not in use as such anymore.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah, fair enough. So we’re talking about picric acid here. Can you give us a bit of a background? What exactly is picric acid and what makes it so dangerous?

Frances Briggs

So picric acid is a chemical that we used to use a lot more.

In the past, it was used to stain tissues in animals. So there was a zoologist on Scott’s team and he might have used it to look at animal tissue.

And then also it’s been used medically in field dressings.

When it’s got a high water content, it’s not so big of a problem, but as the water content reduces over time, as water evaporates, or as they’re at the back of the cupboard, they’re not being used, crystals become more of a problem, like they’d start to form, and then you’ve got that explosive potential.

So these crystals are trinitrophenols, and they’re really sensitive to disturbance, and they’re explosive.

So it’s a big problem if they are there in terms of safely looking after them.

And then the other chemical that Antarctica New Zealand has warned of is peroxide crystals. And these crystals can form in ether over time.

Mariana Kneppers

Oh, I see. So it’s not just picric acid, but also peroxide crystals that can be explosive. So we’re concerned about both of those.

Frances Briggs

So ether becomes peroxide crystals. Picric acid is in solution most of the time, but then when it’s not in use, it can start forming these crystals.

And they’re two separate things.

So the ether was used at that time as an anaesthetic and other stuff, but probably during these explorations more medically, whereas the picric acid was most likely, I think, used more biologically.

Mariana Kneppers

I see. Okay. So both things that can crystallise and become quite explosive.

Frances Briggs

If disturbed. Yes, exactly.

Mariana Kneppers

So is this something that it’s like a ticking time bomb or just waiting for them to kind of explode, or do they have to be disturbed for this to be dangerous?

Frances Briggs

Yeah, they have to be disturbed.

I guess they’re very hazardous just sat there on the shelf. If they are there, which is part of what Antarctica New Zealand is wanting to explore, they want to know for sure if those peroxide crystals are there and the picric acid crystals as well.

Say if you disturb the stopper of a picric acid solution container that could result in an explosion.

It’s so sensitive, like you might not even be close to the crystals by doing that, but it would cause a reaction and a big one.

Mariana Kneppers

So it’s not quite confirmed, but potentially this could be a bit of a literal minefield within these laboratories.

So what is being done about the situation?

Frances Briggs

Antarctica New Zealand is working with New Zealand Defence because it’s kind of like bomb disposal. You need that level of care.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like I heard a similar story that we reported on a while ago about finding chemicals in the back of school cupboards that weren’t really used recently.

Phillip Broadwith

Yeah, so there used to be quite popular practicals that would involve picric acid or 2,4-dinitrophenol.

And about 10 years ago, there was a curriculum change and some of these practicals were brought back as an option for schools.

And that led to quite a lot of school science technicians discovering that they had crusty old bottles of picric acid at the back of their cupboards, which they hadn’t really thought about for a while.

And so there were several schools where they ended up calling out the bomb squad to dispose of these bottles of picric acid because they had crystallised, because you’ve now got that hazard present.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah, I guess school-wise, that context, there’s a lot of people around. That’s quite stressful.

This context, I mean, still dangerous, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t help but think being in the middle of Antarctica, where it’s not very regularly visited, helps the situation a bit, right?

Phillip Broadwith

The risk to humans is perhaps less, but you know, those sites are completely unique historical kind of sites.

So the rest of the stuff in those huts, if it’s destroyed in an explosion, then it’s completely irreplaceable.

Mariana Kneppers

So of course.

Frances Briggs

Yeah, it definitely would have a large negative historic impact on what was happening there.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah. Has there been anything else that they found in these huts that’s of interest, maybe less explosive, hopefully.

Frances Briggs

Well, they did, I think, I can’t quite remember when it was, but semi-recently they found a fruitcake, or I think it was a fruitcake, that was still in its wrapper and it was thought to be about 100 years old.

And it’s basically conserved because of the climate.

So as you say, there would be negative consequences, but I think because there are minimal disturbances naturally, there’s only eight people allowed to visit these huts at once and they have to be with someone who knows what they’re doing.

That risk of disturbance is not there, but it’s not as big as it could be.

Mariana Kneppers

Yeah, I mean, it only takes a rogue breeze to knock one of these bottles over and it could be quite catastrophic for the historical significance.

So what is being done about the situation?

Frances Briggs

At the moment, the kind of safety in place are a few signs and a rope. So it doesn’t feel like it’s being dramatised necessarily.

So last year, they realised that these chemicals might be present and they tried to go and risk assess, basically, but Antarctic sea ice prevented them.

So this year, this season, the 2026 and 2027 season, they’re going to try again.

Mariana Kneppers

Well, that’s the thing. If the sea ice has blocked them and it’s blocked everyone else, right? So at the end of the day, they’ll still be the first ones on site to be able to take care of things.

Definitely something that, you know, hopefully is addressed sooner rather than later.

So fingers crossed they can get through at the beginning of the season.

Yeah, wow, really interesting stuff. Well, thank you both so much.

Frances Briggs

Thank you, Mariana.

Phillip Broadwith

Thanks for having us.

This Week in Chemistry History: Robert Goddard and Modern Rocketry

Mariana Kneppers

And finally, this week in chemistry history, Robert Goddard’s landmark patent for a multi-stage rocket powered by solid fuel was granted on July 7th, 1914.

This was one of two patents that formed the basis of modern rocket propulsion.

Goddard first became fascinated with the concept of space after reading War of the Worlds at age 16, and went on to study physics at Worcester Polytechnic University.

His early attempts at rocketry caused quite a stir, with one attempt ending in a near suspension and a dramatic cloud of smoke in the basement of the physics building.

At the time, scientists scoffed at the idea of space exploration, considering it an unrealistic goal.

So for the most part, Goddard kept his dream of reaching space by rocket to himself to avoid ridicule.

He took on a teaching role at Clark University, where the light teaching load allowed him to pursue his rocket research.

One of Goddard’s students was, in fact, Edwin Aldrin Sr., the father of astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who would grow up to be the second human ever to walk on the moon.

In 1914, his first two landmark patents were accepted and registered, one for a multi-stage rocket fuelled with a solid explosive material, and the other for a rocket fuelled by liquid propellants.

At the time, liquid fuel was expensive and difficult to manage, so much of Goddard’s early work focused on solid fuel design.

He ran a series of experiments testing the energy density and propulsion of various fuels, starting with ordinary black powder rockets like fireworks and signal flares.

He eventually settled on using tightly packed smokeless powder, which gave him the best results.

After dozens of experiments, he managed to achieve ejection velocities of nearly 8,000 feet per second.

He even demonstrated their efficiency in a vacuum, disproving the theory at the time that rockets could not function in the vacuum of space.

He eventually received a grant to build his multi-stage rocket in the form of an atmospheric sounding rocket.

The design consisted of multiple solid propellant charges that were automatically fed into the main chamber, ignited, and discarded sequentially until all the cartridges had been fired.

With the US’s entry into World War I, Goddard began to wonder if this rocket could also have military applications.

He began to test and fire his rockets for the war effort.

However, he could never seem to make his multi-charge rocket work.

The system was too complicated and the mechanism kept jamming, so he abandoned solid fuels for his second patent, the liquid propellant design instead.

This eventually led to the world’s first successful launch of a liquid-fuelled rocket.

Years later, his solid fuel principle was eventually revived and redesigned during World War II to create the bazooka.

Goddard’s two patents laid the foundational groundwork for modern rocketry.

His solid fuel design was one of the earliest designs for a multi-stage rocket, and together, the two patents bridged the gap between solid propellant devices and his later breakthroughs with liquid-fuelled propulsion.

Across his lifetime, Goddard was credited with 214 patents, plus an additional 131 filed after his death.

His contributions paved the way for the modern rockets we use today, earning him the title of the man who ushered in the space age.

Outro

Mariana Kneppers

That’s all for this edition of the podcast.

If you’re interested and want to hear more about any of the items we’ve covered, check out chemistryworld.com for more of the latest stories in the chemical sciences.

You can also sign up for our weekly newsletters like Reaction, giving you a hand-picked selection of stories from Chemistry World and beyond, from newsletter and research editor Jennifer Newton, or our industry brief containing essential analysis and insight on the industrial side of chemistry from business editor Phillip Broadwith.

I’m Mariana Kneppers. We’ll see you next time.

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This transcript was generated by AI and checked by a human editor