Structure of the Chemical Industry

The organizational structure of the chemical industry in India has been an inherent element in its progress and development and has played a significant role in establishing India s self-reliance. To quote (S4)  

In 1948, the government of India announced a policy of planned development and regulation of industries. The objective was to arrive at a mixed economy which overall would be beneficial to the nation. Since India is dedicated to a form of social control through democratic procedures, the term mixed economy refers to ownership of industrial units supported partly by public funds and partly by private funds. Modifications have been made from time to time in the policy and in the actual administrative structure. 

Under this industrial policy, Indian industries were classified into three groups (Ml)  

Lists of the specific industries included under these three categories have been issued from time to time by the government. Although the first two categories were to be exclusively state-owned, considerable private ownership is found in these categories at the present time. For industry as a whole 30% is public and 60% is private, the remaining being in the joint sector. The chemical industry shows the same pattern. 

The development councils for specific areas comprising the chemical 

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The current structure of the chemical industry can be characterized by the different products starting at with oil and gas and with further refinements on the following steps with petrochemicals, basis chemicals, polymers, specialties and active ingredients as shown in fig. 26. 

Another problem with fermentation products is often the limited outlet. The primary fermentation products such as alcohols require chemical transformations to convert them into species acceptable by the chemical industry as intermediates. This can normally occur through dehydration reactions [77]. For example, ethanol may need to be dehydrated into ethylene, isopropanol into propylene and n-butanol into n-butylene. These reactions are reversed petrochemical reactions and normally lead to products that have a lower selling price than the starting materials under the present structure of the chemical industry. For this reason, bioethanol is still used unchanged as an oxygenated gasoline additive. 

Table 1.2.5 gives the annual global production of important chemicals in 2003. In general, the structure of the chemical industry is characterized by a small number of base chemicals such as ammonia, ethylene, and chlorine, which are further converted into many intermediates such as ethylenoxide, styrene and vinyl chloride and... 

It is impossible to clearly separate the effects of TSCA from a multitude of other factors which contribute to changes in innovation or the economic condition of the chemical industry. Changes in the tax structure or the inflation rate, for example, have much more impact on innovation and industry R D than does TSCA. But the effects of TSCA cannot be isolated from these other factors. 

In his famous work of 1920 Hermann Staudinger first described the correct structure of polystyrene (10). It was Staudinger, too, who gave polystyrene its name and elucidated the mechanism of its formation (11). The polymerization of styrene provided access to a big class of substances and made a significant contribution to the understanding of natural polymers and to the synthesis of industrial plastics. A whole new branch of the chemical industry is based on the key substance polystyrene. 

Wei, Russell, and Swartzlander The Structure of the Chemical Processing Industries Whitwell and Toner Conservation of Mass and Et 0gy... 

But how do lawn service providers themselves view such risks Applicators continue to claim publicly, of course, that their products are safe, including making the often-circulated and unverified claim that customers eating 300 cups of treated grass clippings would have consumed the equivalent toxicity of one cup of coffee. The structure of the applicator industry allows a tremendous diversity of firms, however, and differentially placed participants in the lawn chemical economy are differentially sanguine about health and safety claims made by the industry s public relations machine. 

The structure of the petrochemical industry is a highly interactive and complex structure as it involves hundreds of chemicals and processes with products of one process being the feedstocks of many others. For most chemicals, the production route from feedstock to final products is not unique, but includes many possible alternatives. As complicated as it may seem, this structure is comprehensible, at least in a general sense. 

Fathi-Afshar, S. and Yang, J. (1985) Designing the optimal structure of the petrochemical industry for minimum cost and least gross toxicity of chemical production. Chemical Engineering Science, 40, 781. 

Our own research into best practice in this area does not surface one right answer, and given the vast differences between chemical companies, we would be very surprised if it did. Nevertheless, one organizational model seems to fit the needs of the chemical industry particularly well in our experience, this is an organization with global business divisions (i.e., product-based business units with worldwide control of all critically important business functions) as the main axle, guided by the corporate center and supported by shared services. About three quarters of the global players in chemicals have adopted this structure. 

Public Perception of the Chemical Industry - its Structure and Significance... 

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