Business View Magazine
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Today, the major uses of organic iodine compounds
are as: catalysts; disinfectants; food supplements;
stabilizers; dyes, colorants, and pigments; medicines
and pharmaceuticals; and various uses in analytical
chemistry. Inorganic iodides find specialized applica-
tions – silver iodide is not only a major ingredient of
photographic film, it is used to seed clouds to induce
rain. Radioactive isotopes of iodine are used to treat
thyroid cancer.
Iodine is found on Earth mainly as the highly water-
soluble iodide: ion I-, which concentrates in oceans
and brine pools. Of the several places in which iodine
occurs, only two sources are useful commercially: the
caliche, a sedimentary rock, found in Chile, and the
iodine-containing brines of gas and oil fields, espe-
cially in Japan and the United States. The first iodine
production in the United States occurred when it was
harvested from seaweed off the coast of California be-
tween 1917 and 1921.
Getting iodine from brine is how Deepwater Chemi-
cals, itself, got started. In 1931, the original company,
Deepwater Iodides, began recovering iodine from the
brine associated with the oil and gas drilling opera-
tions in the Long Beach area on California’s southern
coast. In the 1970s, the company started making io-
dine derivatives - 50 different iodine-based chemicals
went into animal feed and other commodity products.
In the early 1990’s, Deepwater Iodides moved to Okla-
homa to be nearer to the Morrow Formation, an un-
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Deepwater Chemicals, Inc.
WHAT:
Leading manufacturer of iodine-based spe-
cialty chemicals
WHERE:
Woodward, Oklahoma
WEBSITE
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