Chemical product classification specialty chemicals

A key product classification scheme in the chemical industry is the differentiation of specialty and commodity products. Kline (1976) provides a segmentation of the chemical industry into commodities, specialties and fine chemicals shown in fig. 28. 

For phenolics in fruit by-products such as apple seed, peel, cortex, and pomace, an HPLC method was also utilized. Apple waste is considered a potential source of specialty chemicals (58,62), and its quantitative polyphenol profile may be useful in apple cultivars for classification and identification. Chlorogenic acid and coumaroylquinic acids and phloridzin are known to be major phenolics in apple juice (53). However, in contrast to apple polyphenolics, HPLC with a 70% aqueous acetone extract of apple seeds showed that phloridzin alone accounts for ca. 75% of the total apple seed polyphenolics (62). Besides phloridzin, 13 other phenolics were identified by gradient HPLC/PDA on LiChrospher 100 RP-18 from apple seed (62). The HPLC technique was also able to provide polyphenol profiles in the peel and cortex of the apple to be used to characterize apple cultivars by multivariate statistical techniques (63). Phenolic compounds in the epidermis zone, parenchyma zone, core zone, and seeds of French cider apple varieties are also determined by HPLC (56). Three successive solvent extractions (hexane, methanol, aqueous acetone), binary HPLC gradient using (a) aqueous acetic acid, 2.5%, v/v, and (b) acetonitrile fol-... 

There are other methods of classifying the products of the CPI. Frequently combinations of classifications are used to give insights into various aspects of the industry. One of the more useful of these is a classification obtained by combining production volume and differentiation to yield the four product classifications shown in Table 5.6. This separation into commodity, pseudocommodity, fine, and specialty chemicals is particularly useful in examining differences in research and development, manufacturing methods, marketing, and finance for... 

The classification of products of Chapter 5 designating products as commodities, pseudo-commodities, fine chemicals, and specialty chemicals provides... 

There are no universally accepted definitions of bulk, fine, and specialty chemicals, nor are these classifications based on any intrinsic properties. A substance that is currently viewed as a bulk chemical might well have been classified as a fine chemical at an earlier stage in its development. A useful working definition of a fine chemical is one with a price of more than 10 US dollars kg and a volume of less than 10000 tons per annum on a worldwide basis. We make no distinction between fine chemicals, that are often intermediates, and specialty chemicals such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and flavors and fragrances. The type of technology used to manufacture these products is dictated more by volume than by product application. 

This classification correlates with the chemical value chain and the product tree. Products produced in early stages of the product value chain are rather commodity-type products, while products produced in the very late stage of the value chain are rather specialty-type products. Commodity and specialty classification is often not straight-forward and can depend on a set of characteristics as shown in table 6 ... 

ASTM C455-84 Standard classification of chrome brick, chrome-magnesite brick, magnesite-chrome brick, and magnesite brick. Annual Book of ASTM Standards, Section 15 General Products, Chemical Specialties, and End Use Products, Volume 15.01 Refractories, Carbon and Graphite Products, Activated Carbon, Advanced Ceramics. Philadelphia ASTM, 1995 85-86. 

---