Chemical industry, development

Chemistry - or chemicals - lies at the heart of everything fibers for new textiles, catalysts for a clean environment, colors that gleam in the sun, polymer electrolyte diaphragms for fuel cells, chemicals for chip production, or fertilizers that help plants grow, ensuring global food production. The chemical industry develops the intermediate products that other industries use, and often develops new processes and products itself, or in conjunction with customers. 

Catalysis has made possible the change in the chemical process industry from feedstocks of coal and acetylene, to ethylene. Activation of alkanes is now a major research topic. German industrial scientists led in the coal- and acetylene-based chemical industry developments. Many of the chemical products were for the dyestuffs industry. 

In the twentieth century oil overtook coal as the main source of bulk organic compounds so that simple hydrocarbons like methane (CH4, natural gas ) and propane (CH3CH2CHV calor gas ) became available for fuel. At the same time chemists began the search for new molecules from new sources such as fungi, corals, and bacteria and two organic chemical industries developed in parallel— bulk and fine chemicals. Bulk chemicals like paints and plastics are usually based on simple molecules produced in multitonne quantities while fine chemicals such as drugs, perfumes, and flavouring materials are produced in smaller quantities but much more profitably. 

Acrylamide with a demand of 200,000 tons year" is one of the most important commodities in the world. It is used for the preparation of coagulators, soil conditioners, stock additives for paper treatment, and in leather and textile industry as a component of synthetic fibers. Conventional chemical synthesis involving hydration of acrylonitrile with the use of copper salts as a catalyst has some disadvantages rate of acrylic acid formation higher than acrylamide, by-products formation and polymerization, and high-energy inputs. To overcome these limits since 1985, the Japanese company Nitto Chemical Industry developed a biocatalyzed process to synthesize... 

Up until the 1940s the manufacture of heavy chemicals in India was insignificant. For example, the production of H2SO4 was only 18,000 tons as contrasted with 7 million tons in the United States. Until the establishment of the first contact acid plant in 1948, all production involved the chamber process. The installed annual capacity in 1948 was 175,000 tons, distributed among 49 different factories. Because India does not have a source of free sulfur, the production of H2SO4 is one of the critical chemical industries. Development of the large deposits of iron pyrite in the northern part of the country would alleviate this problem. 

Mohat, Halador, Advances in Chem. Ser., No. 10, 114-20 (1954). Information on the chemical industry developed by antitrust cases. 

Information on the Chemical Industry Developed by Antitrust Cases... 

MOHAT—INFORMATION ON THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY DEVELOPED BY ANTITRUST CASES... 

Nevertheless, the major restructuring of the chemical industry developed only after the crisis precipitated by a second oil shock following the revolution in Iran in 1979, and extended through 1982 by a double-dip recession that created the worst economic times between the Great Depression and the end of the century. 

During the 1960 s, the chemical industry developed rapidly, and to achieve the benefits of scale, chemical plants became larger and more sophisticated. As communications and greater public awareness heightened the effect of incidents in the industry during the 1970 s, great strides had to be made to improve the tools available to increase process safety and reliability. Its threefold purpose is described below. 

Then, too, as chemical industries develop in our present foreign markets, exports will shrink, while imports will rise. As a result, domestic markets will be spaded more intensely and the reduction of excess capacity can be expected to become still more difficult. Furthermore, with accelerated technological progress, the rate of obsolescence of present facilities will quicken. 

A radical turn in the development of new chemicals occurred when coal, and then oil distillation offered so many opportunities. After the first chemical revolution, the birth of organic chemistry was also a leap forward in chemical industry developments. After the extract of... 

This paper focuses on the question of why the modem chemical industry developed in Finland so slowly and so late, and attempts to explain the difference between apparent potential and unpretentious achievements. 

Thorpe G.R., Pneumatic conveying driers, Chemical Industry Development, Incorporating CP E, pp. 13-19,1975. 

The Japanese chemical industry developed later, when the world chemical industry was already dominated by Europe and the U.S. As one might expect, Japanese technological capabilities in chemicals were far less advanced than in the West during the first half of the century. The late industrialization had several important aspects. First, Japanese firms have extensively imported and used technology developed elsewhere. Second, Japanese chemical firms have had to face competition from European and U.S. firms that had far greater technological capabilities. Finally, the Japanese economy as a whole developed behind trade barriers. All three features left their mark on structure of the Japanese industry... 

In 1918, after the end of the First World War and the disintegration of Austria-Hungary, the new independent state of Czechoslovakia was founded and the society immediately reacted with a memorandum that proposed establishment of a chemical section in the Ministry of Industry, which would act as a supporting factor for chemical industry development and a counselling... 

An overview of the Swiss chemical industry would not be complete without reference to other branches of this industry. In most countries, in regions with home based textile industries, the heavy chemical industry developed right at the start of the nineteenth century, manufacturing acids and other inorganic substances for dyers, calico printers and bleachers. The same applied in Switzerland, but most of these plants disappeared around 1850 with the advent of the railway network local manufacture became obsolete as transportation costs went down. Only the Uetikon company, located on the east bank of Lake Zurich, survived as the most successful Swiss heavy chemicals plant. ... 

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