Specialty Chemicals Production

1 Process Industries, Chemical Industry and Specialty Chemicals 

Production systems can be separated into discrete parts production and process industry production. In discrete parts production, countable objects 

Kline (1976, pp. 110-111) and Amecke (1987, pp. 63-65) provide further characteristics and examples for each of the segments  

Oil field chemicals (5) Separation membranes (4) Nanoscale chemicals (4) 

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Specialty Chemical Products, Product Bulletin, 5M 682 TGT, Lon2a Inc., Fair Lawn, N.J., 1987. 

Laboratories Listed toxic chemicals that are manufactured, processed, or otherwise used in laboratory activities at a covered facility under the direct supervision of a technically qualified individual do not have to be factored into the threshold and release calculations. However, pilot plant scale and specialty chemical production do not qualify for this laboratory activities exemption. 

Felcht reports on Degussa s activities in cooperation with partners from academia and industry to develop innovative industrial-scale micro-structured reactors for making large-tonnage products by liquid- and gas-phase reactions [137]. The aim is to make the potential of micro reactors more widely available for a larger variety of processes, naturally with focus on Degussa s fine and specialty chemical productions. Also, the aim is to circumvent traditional problems of scale-up. 

Catalysis opens reaction pathways that are not accessible to uncatalysed reactions. It should be self-evident that thermodynamics predict whether a reaction can occur. So, catalysis influences reaction rates (and as a consequence selectivities), but the thermodynamic equilibrium still is the boundary. Catalysis plays a key role in chemical conversions, although it is fair to state that it is not applied to the same degree in all sectors of the chemical industry. While in bulk chemicals production catalytic processes constitute over 80 % of the industrially applied processes, in fine chemicals and specialty chemicals production catalysis plays a relatively modest role. In the pharmaceutical industry its role is even smaller. It is the opinion of the authors that catalysis has a large potential in these areas and that its role will increase drastically in the coming years. However, catalysis is a multidisciplinary subject that has a lot of aspects unfamiliar to synthetic chemists. Therefore, it was decided to treat catalysis in a separate chapter. 

Both continuous and batch process operations can be used. Batch processes are generally preferred for small-scale and specialty chemicals production. 

Nager, P., Applications of 1,3-propanediol, presentation given at the CHEMSPEC Asia 91 conference, Tokyo, Japan, June 24-25, 1991, Specialty Chemicals Production, Marketing and Application. 

What is sold is the person s ability, in using specialty chemical products, to achieve maximum product performance, and thus keep cooling systems clean and operating efficiently. 

Cao, Z. Groen, H. Hammond, R.B. etal., Monitoring the crystallization of organic specialty chemical products via on-line analytical techniques International Symposium on Industrial Crystallization, 14th, Cambridge, UK, September 12-16, 1999, 2267-2278. 

Design Principles of Specialty Chemicals Production Networks... 

Specialty chemicals production networks can be looked at from two different perspectives the site perspective and the value chain perspective. As discussed in Chapter 2.3.2 a specialty chemicals production site usually hosts several plants that may each belong to a different value chain. At the same time a value chain s plants are typically spread across several sites located in different economic regions. As a result one obtains a matrix structure such as the conceptual matrix shown in Figure 10. For each value chain the grey triangles show the importance of the different sites for the... 

Since the primary role of sites in specialty chemicals production networks is to provide infrastructure services for the different plants they host, the design principle underlying specialty chemicals production networks has to be analyzed from the value chain perspective. Both market area plant and product plant segmentations can be found (cf. Schmenner 1982a, p. 13). Often, in case of relatively small production volumes, each plant produces a segment of the value chain s product portfolio for global... 

A Real-World Specialty Chemicals Production Network... 

Today s specialty chemicals industry consists of several companies with global operations and countless regional/niche competitors. To illustrate the complexity of specialty chemicals production networks, the network operated by American company Rohm and Haas is presented here. It is chosen because of the public availability of data14 but is representative of other specialty chemicals companies networks. 

For specialty chemicals production networks, the planning and controlling process has to combine the site perspective and the value chain perspective. Most specialty chemicals companies have a division/business unit organization and operate sites shared by several divisions. While each division can cover the value chain perspective individually, for example by integrating the above-mentioned indicators into controlling processes, the site perspective requires cross-divisional coordination to avoid suboptimal solutions. Different options ranging from centralized to decentralized setups exist to do so (cf. Hayes and Wheelwright 1984, pp. 120-125). 

Based on a comparison of alternative proposals from literature, in this chapter modeling approaches are developed that cover the specific requirements of specialty chemicals production networks. The focus is not so much on mathematical aspects but on applicability to problems from industry. 

As discussed in Chapter 2.2.2 a broad range of criteria have to be considered if an in-depth assessment of individual sites is required. In practice matters are further complicated by the fact that the majority of sites host plants from multiple value chains. In this chapter a uniform decision support tool is developed to ensure consistent evaluations in all instances requiring site assessments. To this end Chapter 4.1 introduces the field of Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). Two different families of tools that could be applied to the decision problem at hand are discussed in greater detail in Chapters 4.2 and 4.3 respectively. As the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for multiple criteria decision problems has been proposed in literature, too, the method is introduced in Chapter 4.4. An evaluation model for specialty chemicals production sites developed in cooperation with the industrial partner is presented in Chapter 4.5 and insights from application case studies are reported. 

Exceptions from the substantial transformation principle can be found for example in the form of outward processing rules or integrated sourcing initiatives. If the importer is the country s government, offset requirements can be established to limit the outflow of cash. These requirements force the exporter to purchase a certain value of products produced in the importing country, to establish local manufacturing or to use locally produced components in manufacturing. This type of restriction is especially common in the context of military purchases and not relevant for specialty chemicals production. 

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