World chemical industry

The manner in which the world chemical industry quickly produced vast tonnages of DDT during the war was amazing. Even more so was the efficiency achieved in production, so that entomologists had an insecticide available at a price which permitted its... 

The total amount of renewable resources available around the world amounts to 170 GT/y (see Figure 10.6). Among them, 4.6 GT/y equivalent carbon are left in the fields as agricultural residues, while the world chemical industry currently consumes around 0.6 GT/y equivalent carbon (10% of the total current world... 

China National Chemical Information Centre (1993) World Chemical Industry Yearbook, China Chemical Industry—1993, Beijing, p. 170... 

The purpose of this monograph is to make chemists and those working with chemicals aware of the practical aspects—the existance and dangers--of chemical teratogenesis. Chemicals are unavoidable in the modern world. Chemical industry employs numerous women. 

Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is a widely used high-volume raw and intermediate material in the world chemical industry. For the last several decades it has been increasingly supplied as a by-product of propylene ammoxidation—by... 

When these problems stabilize, one can look for a strong world chemical industry which will emerge signifying a healthy, growing Japanese CPI. In spite of the financial difficulties, 15 new CPI facilities were listed being under construction in early 1999 [13]. 

The first question to be asked before considering the role of the chemical industry in the future is to question its need. The world s population continues to increase from today s all time maximum. The life expectancy of both the fit and the ill in the developed world continues to increase. Our response to natural disasters or problems threatening life anywhere around the world invariably involves the deployment of the products of the worlds chemical industry. The developing world progresses into the developed world by acquiring or producing amongst other products the products of the chemical industry. 

Elowever, as it tends to be the largest companies that first make this move to environmental reporting, the proportion of industry turnover (i.e. environmental impact) covered by the CERs will be much greater than the above figure. For example, in the world chemicals industry, the top 50 companies represent close to 25% of the industry turnover. 

The regional market may mean several things—the European Economic Community or the Central American Common Market are among those that come to mind.. For our purposes, however, let us think in terms of larger geographic definitions Europe, Latin America, Canada, Japan, Australia, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Over the last twenty years, each of these areas has developed differently and, from the point of view of the worlds chemical industry, has exhibited a different set of needs. In the foreseeable future, the differentiation will continue. This basic fact underlies, and is a key factor in, the determination of how we must organize to sell in the world market. 

This is acceptance of risk management decisions of other countries and of the risk assessment on which such decisions arc based. If accepted universally by developing countries, this concept will have a significant effect on the world chemical industry and hasten the harmonization of regulations. 

The oil crisis of 1973 brought home the fact, anticipated in the Report of the Club of Rome Project , that fossil fuels are non-renewable resources, and that natural gas and oil, which have been the twin pillars of the chemical industry for several decades, will be exhausted before coal. Moreover, the resources of oil are not equally distributed over the world and this makes formation of cartels easier (although it cannot of course guarantee their success). The free-world chemical industry is therefore quite vulnerable and can easily be a hostage to political pressure. Since the resources of coal are estimated to be four to six times larger than those of oil and are better spread over the world, coal utilization received a great impulse in 1973. A modest but important success of the efforts to find alternatives for oil and gas is already observable the lowest economic prices of alternative fuels, and of chemicals from alternative raw materials, now form the upper limit for prices dictated by the oil producing countries. 

For a brief international review see Gary Goertz, The World Chemical Industry Around 1910. A Comparative Analysis by Branch and Country (Geneva Centre of International Economic History, 1990), pp. 15-30. 

The shipment value of the world chemical industries in 1989 was as follows ... 

Industrial commodity polymers are the backbone of the world chemical industry and provide extreme value and stability that are appropriate for a plethora of applications. Their ease of synthesis enables the utilization of a large number of chemical functionalities that influence their final properties, but with relatively little control over 3D polymer shape on the molecular scale. By contrast, biological polymers, primarily proteins, feature a relatively small pool of chemical functionalities, yet their molecular stmctures can be almost infinitely custom-tailored for specific applications. However, biomacromolecules are orders of magnitude more expensive to produce and generally display much poorer stability in harsh conditions, and thus are limited, essentially, to medical and biotechnology applications. ... 

The inability of the world chemical industry to match capacity and... 

The Japanese chemical industry developed later, when the world chemical industry was already dominated by Europe and the U.S. As one might expect, Japanese technological capabilities in chemicals were far less advanced than in the West during the first half of the century. The late industrialization had several important aspects. First, Japanese firms have extensively imported and used technology developed elsewhere. Second, Japanese chemical firms have had to face competition from European and U.S. firms that had far greater technological capabilities. Finally, the Japanese economy as a whole developed behind trade barriers. All three features left their mark on structure of the Japanese industry... 

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