Editorial introduction

This book provides an introduction to the main sectors of the chemical industry, and complements An Introduction to Industrial Chemistry (subsequently referred to as Volume I) which covers the physico-chemical principles of the subject, as well as introductory technical economics and chemical engineering. 

Each chapter includes common themes, such as brief history, present position, major products and the future. The final chapter links together the predictions made for the future of each sector, to give an overall projection for the whole chemical industry the quadrupling of oil prices in 1974 and the widespread recession at the beginning of the 1980s provide a salutary lesson about the difficulty of such projections. 

The importance of the use of trivial names in industry will be apparent from the examples given indeed, they are used throughout the book. This should not present any difficulty to readers who are conversant with systematic (lUPAC) names, since chemical structures are also usually given. 

We have also, as in Volume I, standardized on the following units tonnes for weight, °C for temperature, and US and UK for monetary values. Conversion to other units can be made using the table in Volume I, p. vii. 

I wish to acknowledge the co-operation of all contributors and to stress that they are expressing their own views, which are not necessarily those of their respective companies. We thank our colleagues and families for their help and support in this venture and the publishers for their advice. 

Industrial chemistry is a topic of growing interest and importance for all chemistry students. Indeed a survey of all U.K. departments which offer a degree course in chemistry showed that almost two-thirds included some industrial chemistry in their courses and several offered a full degree in this subject. 

Industrial chemistry is characterized by the very broad nature of the subject, spanning as it does several different disciplines. Apart from chemistry it includes topics such as organization and management of a company, technical economics, chemical engineering and environmental pollution control, and it would not be complete without an in-depth study of several particular sectors of the chemical industry. The latter would be selected as a representative cross-section of the entire industry. 

Clearly a comprehensive treatment of all these topics would hardly be possible even in a full degree in industrial chemistry, let alone as an option or 

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Mischel, T. (ed.) (1977) Editorial introduction to The Self. Psycho-logical and Philosophical Issues, Oxford Blackwell. 

Chambers, R., 1990 Editorial Introduction Vulnerability, Coping, and Policy, IDS Bulletin 20, 2 p 1-7. 

Schyfter, P., Calvert, J., Frow, E. (2013). Editorial introduction Synthetic biology Making biology into an engineering discipline. Engineering Studies, 5(1), 1-5. 

The Editors are well aware that it is rather unusual to write an editorial introduction to one particular chapter however, in this case it seems to be appropriate and desirable. The reason is that this chapter is at least as much about the future of (nuclear) energy production as about its present (and to some extent its past). 

R. S. Istepanian, E. Jovanov, and Y. Zhang, "Guest editorial introduction to the special section on m-health Beyond seamless mobility and global wireless health-care connectivity," IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 405-414,2004. 

Penalosa, E. (1976). Editorial introduction. Habitat An International Journal, 1(1), 1-2. 

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