The chemical industry today

The chemical industry has grown to become one of the largest manufacturing industries in the world, with sales estimated in the year 2000 to be well in excess of 1500 billion dollars. Some projections indicate an increase in the number of commercially available chemicals in the immediate future, with the possibility that they will be administered in smaller but more potent doses. 

The output from the industry covers the very large pharmaceutical, petrochemical and agrochemical businesses, as well as many others that provide speciality chemicals and consumer products such as paints, dyes, plastics and textiles. The industry is a large employer with an estimated 1.7 million people and many more that are reliant on its services. In Europe, sales in the year 2000 exceeded 480 billion euros in an industry that contributed almost one-third of the world s output. 

World population grew from 5 to 250 million Cultivated crops and domesticated livestock 

Rotenone used in South Africa to paralyse fish 

Nicotine, from tobacco leaf extract, used as a contact insecticide 

---

Propane and propylene have similar atmospheric boiling points (propane -42.1°C, propylene -47.70°C) and, as a result, the separation of these compounds requires highly complicated units. Distillation is by far the most commonly used separation process in the chemical industry today. The variants in use are ... 

The first twin-screw compounder (ZSK) went into production at Werner Pfleiderer in 1957, marking the beginning of a success story for this type of machine. The first major applications were in the chemical industry. Today, the machine is predominantly used in the plastics industry, e. g., in extrusion and compounding. These screw machines are therefore also known as extruders and the twin-screw is known as the twin-screw extruder. 

Chapter 1 Major Trends Affecting the Chemicals, Coatings and Plastics Industry. This chapter presents an encapsulated view of the major trends that are creating rapid changes in the chemicals industry today. 

Catalysis is the driving force of the modern chemical industry. Although the chemical industry today is disliked by the media who use it as a convenient peg on which to hang many evils of modern society, it accounts for a very substantial proportion of the manufacturing wealth creation of a country. It has been estimated that some 20% of the total Gross Domestic Product is directly or indirectly due to the chemical industry. 

Fig. 3.1 Hybrids dominate the chemical industry today Source McKinsey...

Become a leader in e-business in chosen segments. The Internet is a major discontinuity in the chemicals industry today. Those companies that can successfully take... 

In November 1959 Analytical Chemistry ran an article by Van Zandt Williams, executive vice-president of Perkin-Elmer, a major analytical instrumentation company. Williams was concerned about the lack of cooperation between analytical chemists and instrument manufacturers. He emphasized the urgent need in industry for more efficient methods of analysis "The lack of chemical analytical instrumentation—particularly automatic, direct concentration readout, chemical anal5nical instrumentation—may well be a limitation on progress in the chemical industry today" (p. 25A). He devoted a section of his article to the fact that foreign competition was putting pressure on the chemical industries in the United States to be more efficient, by utilizing more automatic means of analysis (pp. 26A-27A). Yet progress was held back by a lack of cooperation between analytical chemist and instrument maker ... 

Styrene is one of the most important monomers produced by the chemical industry today. It is separated from the products of dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene by a multi-stage rectification. The process inhibitors for styrene are mainly nitroaromatic compounds or aromatic amines and phenolic compounds such as p-tertbutylcatechol or 2,6 ditertbutylhydroxytoluene mixed with other radical acceptor inhibitor. 

Another type of supplier, who occupies a rather dubious position in the chemical industry today, is the cut-rate" operator. He builds a new plant to make a particular material which he can offer at a cheaper price because, like the manufacturer of the blood comparator, he is in business to sell a... 

The following discussion can only provide a very rough overview of the methods mainly used in the chemical industry today, briefly mentioning their strengths and weaknesses. The order of presentation contains a rating only in so fiir that first the qualitative methods are described, followed by the quantitative methods. Besides this, there is not the one and only method. In many cases it is even recommendable to apply a number of methods in combination in order to meet the goal as well as possible. 

In this chapter, an overview of fundamentals and selected systems of PTC is presented. The development of PTC has followed the scientific trend that a successful PTC application frequently stimulates further research that in turn leads to more applications and improved processes. The growth of PTC is also accelerated by its applications in the chemical industry. Today, PTC has grown to become a very important and widely applied... 

The Chemical Industry Today Microscopic vs Macroscopic Approach... 

Metallocene catalysts have been applied to a number of key product families across the chemical industry. Today, polyolefins and styrenics are either commercial or in development with additional polymers and specialty chemicals in the R D pipeline. The work in polyolefins has focussed on polyethylene, polypropylene (isotactic, syndiotactic, and atactic), and cyclic olefins. 

---