by Erin Wayman Thursday, January 5, 2012
In August, the Wall Street Journal reported that a little-known chemicalwas playing a big role in the Cash for Clunkers program. The federalgovernment required dealerships to pour sodium silicate, or liquidglass, into the engines of the traded-in clunkers. The solution destroysthe engine, ensuring that the old cars and trucks never end up back onthe road. The Journal noted that chemical companies couldn’t keep upwith the sodium silicate orders that were pouring in. The demand was sohigh that liquid glass became the “best-selling product of the year,”Robert Mueller, owner of a chemical company in Illinois, told thenewspaper.
But the surge in sodium silicate orders did not have much effect on theminerals that make up the chemical, says Joyce Ober, a mineral commodityspecialist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va. Sodium silicateconsists of soda ash, or sodium carbonate, and high purity silica sand.Ober calculated how much sodium silicate would be needed to retire750,000 cars (about 690,000 clunkers were traded in). Based on thatnumber, she determined the amount of sodium silicate required to destroythose engines would have used only about 0.003 percent of the 11 millionmetric tons of soda ash produced annually and 0.002 percent of the highpurity silica sand produced each year. Thus, Cash for Clunkers “didn’tcreate a new demand” for these minerals, Ober says. But it did givesodium silicate its 15 minutes of fame.
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