Petroleum coke
Four different businesses that share one name.
Fuel-grade green coke into kilns and boilers, anode-grade GPC into calciners, calcined coke into the anode chain, needle coke into graphite electrodes. Same three letters on the enquiry, four separate buyer pools, four separate specifications — and only one of them cares what you paid.
The desk
"Petcoke, 50,000 tonnes, best price" is not an enquiry.
The word covers a 0.8 % sulphur anode feedstock that a calciner will queue for and a 7.5 % sulphur kiln fuel that half the world is not permitted to burn. It covers a coke sold on calorific value and a coke sold on crystallite size. Between the cheapest and the dearest grade on this page there is roughly an order of magnitude, and no amount of negotiation moves one into the other.
Worse, the thing that most often makes a parcel unusable is not on the price sheet. It is morphology — whether the coke came out of the drum as sponge or as shot. A shot-coke cargo can meet every number in an anode-grade table and still be refused by the calciner, because the numbers never described the shape.
So the first thing we ask is not tonnage. It is what the coke is going into, and what your plant has previously refused. That conversation takes ten minutes and it is the difference between a cargo that discharges and a cargo that sits.
Orientation
The four grades, and who actually buys them.
One table before the detail, because most mismatched enquiries are resolved by reading it. The binding constraint column is the one that decides whether a cargo is acceptable — not the sulphur column, which is merely the one everybody quotes.
| Grade | Typical sulphur | Sold on | Binding constraint | Buyer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fuel-grade green | 3.5–8.0 % dry | Calorific value and delivered cost per gigajoule | Whether the destination permits its use as fuel at all | Cement kilns, lime, brick, industrial boilers, power |
| Anode-grade GPC | Broadly 0.8–3.5 % | Sulphur, metals and morphology | Shot content, then sodium, vanadium, nickel, silicon, calcium | Calciners feeding the aluminium anode chain |
| Calcined coke (CPC) | 0.5–3.5 % | Real density, vibrated bulk density, crystallite size | Real density and cleanliness on arrival | Anode and cathode plants, TiO₂, carbon raisers in steel |
| Needle coke | Very low, and nitrogen matters as much | Coefficient of thermal expansion | Puffing behaviour during graphitisation | Graphite electrode makers; synthetic anode material |
Grades
What we supply.
Fuel-grade green petroleum coke
The volume trade. Delayed-coker green coke burned as a solid fuel, competing directly against steam coal on a delivered cost-per-gigajoule basis and usually winning on heat content — typically 14,000–15,500 BTU/lb, around 7,800–8,600 kcal/kg, against a mid-grade thermal coal in the 6,000s.
What it is not is a drop-in coal substitute. Volatile matter runs around 9–12 % against 25 %-plus for bituminous coal, so the flame is harder to hold and the mills have to deliver a finer grind; grindability sits around HGI 40–65, which sets mill throughput before anything else does. Cement kilns handle both by co-firing and by burner design. Boilers that were not designed for it often cannot.
The sulphur is the commercial and regulatory centre of the grade. At 3.5–8 % it is high enough that in a cement kiln it enters the sulphur and alkali cycle and shows up as preheater build-up long before it shows up in the stack, and high enough that a large part of the world restricts or prohibits its use as fuel outright. That is not a technical footnote; it is the first question on any fuel-grade enquiry.
- Typical specification
- Sulphur 3.5–8.0 % dry; total moisture 6.7–12 % as received; ash 0.2–4.0 % dry, usually well under 1 %; volatile matter 9–12 % dry; HGI 40–65; gross calorific value 14,000–15,500 BTU/lb. Sized 0–50 mm as produced.
- Vanadium and nickel
- Reported per parcel. Irrelevant to a cement kiln, decisive for a boiler — vanadium drives high-temperature fouling and corrosion on superheater surfaces, and a parcel that a kiln will take happily can be the wrong fuel for a power plant two ports away.
- Parcels
- Bulk vessels, Handysize to Supramax, 30,000 to 55,000 Mt. Term programmes with monthly liftings where a kiln wants continuity of a single coke rather than a series of unrelated cargoes.
- What we will not do
- Quote a fuel-grade cargo into a destination where its use as fuel is restricted without first putting the restriction in writing on the offer. See import rules below.
Anode-grade green petroleum coke (GPC)
Low-sulphur, low-metals sponge coke sold to calciners, who calcine it and sell on to the carbon plants that bake anodes for aluminium smelters. Roughly 450 kg of anode is consumed per tonne of aluminium produced, and calcined coke is the bulk of the anode recipe alongside recycled anode butts and coal tar pitch binder — which is why this grade tracks aluminium and not energy.
The seller pool is small. Anode-grade coke requires a low-sulphur, low-metals crude slate and a coker run to make sponge rather than shot, and a refinery cannot simply decide to produce it. That scarcity, not the chemistry, is what makes the grade behave the way it does commercially.
One counter-intuitive point that catches buyers new to the chain: very low sulphur is not automatically better in an anode. Sulphur inhibits the catalytic effect of sodium and vanadium on air and CO₂ reactivity, so a coke that is exceptionally low in sulphur but carries alkali metals can burn back faster in the cell than a higher-sulphur coke would. Anode plants therefore buy to a window, not to a minimum, and an offer pitched purely on "ultra low sulphur" often misses what the plant is actually balancing.
- Indicative parameters
- Sulphur broadly 0.8–3.5 % depending on the plant's window; vanadium, nickel, sodium, calcium, silicon and iron each with a ceiling; moisture, volatile matter, HGI and sizing reported. Every parcel is quoted against the buyer's own table, because no two anode plants use the same one.
- Morphology
- Sponge coke. Shot content is limited explicitly on the offer rather than left to the general description — see morphology.
- Metals, again
- Specify whether your ceilings are on the green coke as shipped or on the calcined product. They concentrate through the kiln, and the difference is not a rounding error.
- Parcels
- Bulk vessels, Handysize to Panamax. Segregated stowage and clean holds; this is not a cargo to load after a dirty commodity.
Calcined petroleum coke (CPC)
Green coke after the calciner: moisture and volatile matter driven off, carbon crystallites grown, density and electrical conductivity developed. It goes into prebaked anodes and cathodes for aluminium, into titanium dioxide production, and into steel and foundry work as a carbon raiser or recarburiser.
The specification changes character entirely at this point. Calorific value stops mattering and physical structure starts: real density by helium pycnometer, vibrated bulk density, and crystallite height Lc by X-ray diffraction, which is the closest single number to "how well has this been calcined". A CPC parcel that arrives with the right chemistry and the wrong density is not a cheap version of the right cargo; it is the wrong cargo.
Cleanliness on arrival is the other half. CPC is a finished, dry, comparatively high-value product, and it picks up moisture and contamination readily. Hold condition, weather during loading and discharge, and the transfer equipment at the receiving terminal do more damage to CPC value than anything that happens at the calciner.
- Typical specification
- Fixed carbon 98.5–99.3 %; ash 0.2–1.0 %; volatile matter 0.35–0.5 %; moisture 0.01–0.5 %; real density 2.00–2.09 g/cm³; bulk density 0.75–0.90 g/cm³; sulphur 0.5–3.5 % by grade.
- Trace metals, typical ceilings
- Nickel 100–300 ppm; iron 250–450 ppm; vanadium 250–350 ppm; silicon 200–500 ppm; calcium 100–200 ppm; sodium 100–200 ppm. Tightened to a buyer's table where the application requires it.
- Sizing
- Graded fractions to the buyer's cut, and ground product down to 200 mesh where the application calls for it.
- Packing and parcels
- Bulk vessels, and additionally containers, 20–50 kg bags and jumbo bags where quantity or handling makes bulk impractical. Packed CPC is the one coke on this page that moves in container quantities sensibly.
Needle coke
The premium end. Highly anisotropic coke with a needle-like crystalline structure, calcined and then graphitised into the electrodes that electric arc furnaces consume making steel from scrap — and, increasingly, processed into synthetic graphite for lithium-ion battery anodes.
Petroleum needle coke is made predominantly from fluid catalytic cracker decant oil, which accounts for the large majority of feedstock, with low-sulphur vacuum residue also used. The alternative route is pitch needle coke from high-temperature coal tar pitch, historically more variable in quality and harder to graphitise, though Chinese capacity has expanded on that route. The market grades in tiers — intermediate, super and ultra premium — and the tier, not the tonnage, is the conversation.
The defining property is the coefficient of thermal expansion: an electrode that expands unevenly under thermal shock breaks, and breaking an electrode inside a furnace is expensive in a way that dwarfs the cargo. Sulphur and nitrogen matter because they drive puffing — irreversible expansion as those elements evolve during graphitisation, which cracks the electrode from the inside. This is the one grade on this page where two low numbers are unambiguously better than one.
- How it is bought
- Against CTE, sulphur, nitrogen, ash and real density, to the electrode maker's own table, tier by tier. Nobody buys needle coke on a generic specification.
- Availability, honestly
- Very few plants worldwide make it, output is largely committed, and availability is genuinely episodic rather than continuously offered. We will tell you whether we can serve an enquiry before we discuss terms, and we would rather decline than hold a position open that we cannot fill.
- Parcels
- Smaller than the other grades. Containers and bagged bulk are normal; a full bulk vessel of needle coke is the exception.
The parameters
What each number actually decides.
Coke specifications are long and most of the entries are inert for any given buyer. These are the ones that change an answer from yes to no, and the reason each one does.
| Parameter | Matters to | What it decides |
|---|---|---|
| Sulphur | Every grade, differently | Fuel grade: whether use is permitted at the destination, and kiln sulphur-cycle build-up. Anode: cell performance, within a window rather than at a minimum. Needle: puffing. |
| Morphology — sponge vs shot | Anode chain | Whether a calciner will accept the cargo at all. Not visible in a chemical analysis. |
| Sodium, calcium, vanadium, nickel | Anode chain, boilers | Anodes: catalysed air and CO₂ burn, so anode consumption per tonne of metal. Boilers: high-temperature fouling and corrosion. |
| Silicon and iron | Anode and metallurgical users | Metal purity downstream. A smelter's product specification reaches back into the coke. |
| Volatile matter | Fuel grade, calciners | Flame stability and burner design in a kiln; kiln heat balance and yield for a calciner. |
| HGI | Fuel grade | Mill throughput. A hard coke can cap a plant's firing rate regardless of its calorific value. |
| Real density, VBD, Lc | CPC buyers | Whether the coke has been calcined properly, and how the anode will behave. The substance of a CPC contract. |
| CTE and nitrogen | Needle coke buyers | Whether an electrode survives thermal shock and graphitisation. |
| Moisture and sizing | All grades | Handling, dust, weight settlement, and whether the receiving terminal's equipment can move it. |
Regulation
The cargo is legal. Burning it may not be.
Petcoke is the product on our book where the destination's rules, not the specification, most often decide whether a trade exists. The rules differ by country, by end use and by industry, and they move. This is the position as we understand it at the time of writing, and we confirm it per fixture rather than relying on it.
| Where | What applies | Practical effect |
|---|---|---|
| India | Import of pet coke for fuel use is prohibited. Import is free as feedstock or in the manufacturing process, on an actual-user basis, for the cement, lime kiln, calcium carbide and gasification industries. Separately, annual ceilings apply to anode-chain imports: for FY 2025–26, 0.8 million Mt of calcined coke for the aluminium industry and 1.9 million Mt of raw coke for calcining units, allocated by DGFT under Public Notice 48/2024-25 of 12 February 2025, following a CAQM order of 15 February 2024 and Supreme Court directions. | The largest single import market, and closed to straightforward fuel-grade business. A buyer must hold the actual-user position or an allocation. We ask for it before quoting. |
| China | A major importer of both fuel-grade and anode-grade coke, with sustained policy pressure on high-sulphur fuel coke and quality rules that have tightened over successive revisions. | High-sulphur fuel-grade cargoes carry destination-policy risk that is real but not static. We check the rule in force at the date of the fixture rather than quoting from memory, and we will tell you if we cannot get comfort. |
| European Union — carbon | Petroleum coke is not itself a CBAM good; CN heading 2713 does not appear in the Annex I list. What is in scope is downstream: cement clinker and cement (CN 2507, 2523) and aluminium (CN 7601–7616), among other sectors. CBAM entered its definitive period on 1 January 2026, with a 50 tonne annual de minimis and the first certificate surrender due 30 September 2027 for 2026 imports. | Importing the coke triggers no CBAM obligation. Burning it into clinker or baking it into an anode puts its carbon inside the embedded emissions of a good that does. The exposure is your customer's, one step downstream, and it is worth modelling before a term programme is signed. |
| European Union — ETS | Cement, lime and aluminium installations inside the EU sit under the Emissions Trading System. | The delivered cost of a fuel-grade cargo into an EU kiln is the cargo plus the allowances its combustion consumes. Petcoke's carbon intensity per gigajoule is above coal's, which narrows or reverses the raw price advantage at some allowance prices. |
| Terminals and local air rules | Fugitive dust, storage-pile and handling requirements at the receiving port, set locally rather than internationally. | Decides whether a terminal can take open-pile petcoke at all, and shapes discharge rate and cost. A buyer's terminal is the constraint far more often than the vessel is. |
Carriage
Petcoke is a self-heating cargo, and the Code says so.
Green coke leaving a coker is hot, and coke that goes aboard warm can continue to heat in the hold. The IMSBC Code handles this with a temperature regime rather than a ventilation regime, which surprises people who expect the coal rules.
| Item | Position |
|---|---|
| IMSBC schedule | PETROLEUM COKE (calcined or uncalcined). Group B; classified MHB — SH, a material hazardous only in bulk by reason of self-heating. |
| Temperature threshold | Coke below 55 °C when loaded falls outside the schedule's hot-cargo provisions. Above that, they apply. |
| Maximum loading temperature | 107 °C. A parcel hotter than that is not loaded. |
| Loading over flammable cargo | Where coke above 55 °C is loaded over tanks containing a substance with a flash point below 93 °C, a bottom layer of at least 0.6 m of cooler coke, 44 °C or below, goes in first. |
| Ventilation | The schedule imposes no special ventilation requirement. Gas and temperature monitoring in the holds is nonetheless commonly required by charterparty or by the master's own prudence, and we do not treat the absence of a Code requirement as a reason to skip it. |
| Master's duty | High-temperature warnings posted at the cargo spaces where the hot-cargo provisions apply. |
| Density and stowage | Bulk density 599–800 kg/m³; stowage factor 1.25–1.67 m³/t. Light for its bulk — a coke cargo cubes out before it deadweights, which is what sets the vessel class. |
| Vessels and gear | Handysize to Supramax for green coke, 30,000 to 55,000 Mt; grab discharge or shore conveyor. Quantity by draft survey. CPC additionally in containers, bags and jumbo bags. |
| Dust and hold condition | Coke dust is fine, dark and combustible, and it travels. Hold cleanliness matters commercially for anode-grade and CPC parcels, where contamination is a value question rather than a housekeeping one. |
Scope
We sell the cargo. We do not calcine it and we do not run the terminal.
Said plainly, because coke chains have more intermediate steps than most and it is easy for a proposal to imply a capability that is not there.
- What we do
- Source and supply green, calcined and needle coke as seaborne cargo parcels — FOB, CFR, CIF or delivered to a nominated terminal — with independent inspection, documentation and the specification argued out before the fixture.
- What we do not do
- We do not own or operate calciners, and we do not toll-calcine your green coke. We do not operate storage terminals or grinding plants. We do not blend cokes to hit a number and present the result as a single origin.
- Permits and end use
- Import licences, actual-user registrations, environmental consents and combustion permits are the buyer's. We will flag what we know to be required and we will not quote around a restriction we can see.
- Documentation we do not issue
- Nothing that belongs to a plant operator or a calciner — no calcination certificate for coke we did not calcine, and no end-use declaration on a buyer's behalf.
How to specify
Six lines and we can price it properly.
Send these and the reply is an offer. Send "petcoke, best price" and the reply is this list.
Which coke, and what it feeds
Fuel grade, anode-grade GPC, CPC or needle — and the plant it goes into. The end use resolves half the specification on its own.
Sulphur, as a window
Maximum, and for anode-grade the minimum too. Say whether the figure is on the green coke or the calcined product.
Metals ceilings
Vanadium, nickel, sodium, calcium, silicon, iron. Your table, not a generic one — and again, green basis or calcined basis.
Morphology and sizing
Sponge required, shot tolerance if any, and the size fraction. For fuel grade, HGI and volatile matter if your mills and burners constrain you.
Quantity, basis and the discharge port
Tonnes, FOB / CFR / CIF / delivered, port draft, grabs or conveyor, and the discharge rate the terminal can actually hold.
Your regulatory position at destination
Actual-user status, allocation, permit or industry classification. For fuel grade into a restricted market this is the first question, not the last.
Quality
Named methods, independent hands, retained samples.
Coke is a bulk solid, which means quantity and quality are both determined by procedure rather than by meter. Draft survey for weight, supervised mechanical or stopped-belt sampling for quality, and a named test method against every reported parameter.
We appoint an independent agency for the cargo — SGS, Bureau Veritas or Intertek — instructed jointly, sampling at a point both sides agreed before the vessel arrived. On a cargo where the value sits in a density figure or a metals ppm, the sampling protocol is not administrative detail; it is the contract.
- Methods we name on the certificate
- Volatile matter in green coke by ASTM D6374 (quartz crucible). Grindability by ASTM D5003. For calcined coke: sample preparation by ASTM D6969, real density by helium pycnometer to ASTM D2638, vibrated bulk density to ASTM D4292, and crystallite size Lc by X-ray diffraction to ASTM D5187.
- Also reported per parcel
- Total and inherent moisture, ash, sulphur, fixed carbon by difference, gross and net calorific value for fuel grade, trace metals by the applicable instrumental method, and sieve analysis. The designation used for each is stated on the certificate rather than left as "ASTM".
- Morphology
- Coke type and shot content, reported and warranted where the producer will warrant it, and reported with that limitation stated where they will not.
- Temperature at loading
- Recorded for green coke, against the IMSBC thresholds above. It belongs in the load-port documents, not in a phone call.
- Retained samples
- Sealed retains held against the parcel, so a later dispute is settled on the coke rather than on correspondence.
- Documentation per parcel
- Certificate of Quality, Certificate of Weight by draft survey, Certificate of Origin, Safety Data Sheet under REACH / CLP or GHS in the destination language, bill of lading, and the independent inspection report.
Straight answer
What we will tell you before you ask.
- That the destination rule decides the trade
- On fuel grade especially. If your market restricts petcoke as a fuel and you do not hold the actual-user position or allocation, there is no cargo to discuss and we will say so in the first reply rather than the fourth.
- That shot coke passes chemical tables
- An anode-grade enquiry answered on chemistry alone is not answered. We state coke type and shot content, and where it cannot be warranted we say that rather than let the silence do the work.
- That lower sulphur is not always better
- In the anode chain it is a window, not a minimum. An offer sold to you purely on how low the sulphur is has told you something about the seller.
- That green and calcined ceilings are different numbers
- Metals concentrate through the calciner. A contract that applies a CPC metals table to a GPC cargo is a dispute waiting for a discharge date.
- That your carbon exposure is one step downstream
- The coke itself is outside CBAM. Your clinker and your metal are not, and petcoke's carbon per gigajoule is above coal's. Worth modelling before a term programme, not after.
- Where an origin cannot be cleared
- Coke origins include several jurisdictions that require careful screening. Counterparty and origin are screened per consignment before we quote, and where it cannot be cleared we decline rather than structure around it — see Compliance.
Enquiries
Every enquiry is answered by the desk that handles it.
Send the product, quantity, delivery basis, destination and timing. We revert with availability, an indication and the documentation that accompanies it. Specifications are released once we know who we are speaking with.