chemical industry

chemical industry, complex of processes, operations, and organizations engaged in the manufacture of chemicals and their derivatives.

Although the chemical industry may be described simply as the industry that uses chemistry and manufactures chemicals, this definition is not altogether satisfactory because it leaves open the question of what is a chemical. Definitions adopted for statistical economic purposes vary from country to country. Also the Standard International Trade Classification, published by the United Nations, includes explosives and pyrotechnic products as part of its chemicals section. But the classification does not include the man-made fibres, although the preparation of the raw materials for such fibres is as chemical as any branch of manufacture could be.

The complicated characteristics of the chemical industry

The scope of the chemical industry is in part shaped by custom rather than by logic. The petroleum industry is usually thought of as separate from the chemical industry, for in the early days of the petroleum industry in the 19th century crude oil was merely subjected to a simple distillation treatment. Modern petroleum industrial processes, however, bring about chemical changes, and some of the products of a modern refinery complex are chemicals by any definition. The term petrochemical is used to describe these chemical operations, but, because they are often carried out at the same plant as the primary distillation, the distinction between petroleum industry and chemical industry is difficult to maintain.

Metals in a sense are chemicals because they are produced by chemical means, the ores sometimes requiring chemical methods of dressing before refining; the refining process also involves chemical reactions. Such metals as steel, lead, copper, and zinc are produced in reasonably pure form and are later fabricated into useful shapes. Yet the steel industry, for example, is not considered a part of the chemical industry. In modern metallurgy, such metals as titanium, tantalum, and tungsten are produced by processes involving great chemical skill, yet they are still classified as primary metals.

The boundaries of the chemical industry, then, are somewhat confused. Its main raw materials are the fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and petroleum), air, water, salt, limestone, sulfur or an equivalent, and some specialized raw materials for special products, such as phosphates and the mineral fluorspar. The chemical industry converts these raw materials into primary, secondary, and tertiary products, a distinction based on the remoteness of the product from the consumer, the primary being remotest. The products are most often end products only as regards the chemical industry itself; a chief characteristic of the chemical industry is that its products nearly always require further processing before reaching the ultimate consumer.

Thus, paradoxically, the chemical industry is its own best customer. An average chemical product is passed from factory to factory several times before it emerges from the chemical industry into the market.

There are many routes to the same product and many uses for the same product. The largest use for ethylene glycol, for example, is as an automobile antifreeze, but it is also used as a hydraulic brake fluid. Further processing leads to many derivatives that are used as additives in the textile, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic industries; as emulsifiers in the application of insecticides and fungicides; and as demulsifiers for petroleum. The fundamental chemicals, such as chlorine or sulfuric acid, are used in so many ways as to defy a comprehensive listing.

Because of the competitiveness within the chemical industry and among the chemicals, the chemical industry spends large amounts on research, particularly in the highly industrialized countries. The percentage of revenue spent on research varies from one branch to another; companies specializing in large-volume products that have been widely used for many years spend less, whereas competition in the newer fields can be met only by intensive research efforts.

Economic aspects

In most fields the United States is the largest producer of chemicals. Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and some other European countries are also large producers, and so is the Soviet Union. Japan in the 1960s came into prominence as a very large producer in certain areas. Investment in the chemical industry as a percentage of total investment in a given country may range from 5 to 15 percent for the less-developed countries; for the industrial countries it averages about 6 to 8 percent. For some developing countries this percentage can fluctuate widely; for example, the installation of one sizable fertilizer factory could change the percentage markedly in a specific country.

Early in the 20th century there was a marked distinction between economies that were based on coal as a fossil fuel and those based on petroleum. Coal was almost the unique source of the aromatic hydrocarbons. Two forces, however, have worked together to change this situation. First, aromatics can now also be obtained from petroleum, and indeed all hydrocarbon raw materials are now almost interchangeable; second, modern transportation technology makes possible very large-scale shipments by sea not only of petroleum, crude or in various stages of refinement, but also of natural gas, refrigerated and condensed to a liquid.

Statistics from the chemical industry as a whole can be misleading because of the practice of lumping together such products as inexpensive sulfuric acid and expensive dyes or fibres; included in some compilations are cosmetics and toiletries, the value of which per pound may be artificially high. Chemical industry statistics from different countries may have different bases of calculation; indeed the basis may change from time to time in the same country. An additional source of confusion is that in some cases the production is quoted not in tons of the product itself but in tons of the content of the important component.

For purposes of simplicity, various divisions of the chemical industry, such as heavy inorganic and organic chemicals and various families of end products, will be described in turn and separately, although it should be borne in mind that they interact constantly. The first division to be discussed is the heavy inorganic chemicals, starting at the historical beginning of the chemical industry with the Leblanc process. The terms heavy chemical industry and light chemical industry, however, are not precisely exclusive, because numerous operations fall somewhere between the two classes. The two classes do, however, at their extremes correlate with other differences. For example, the appearance of two kinds of plants is characteristically different. The large-scale chemical plant is characterized by large pieces of equipment of odd shapes and sizes standing immobile and independent of one another. Long rows of distilling columns are prominent, but, because the material being processed is normally confined in pipes or vessels, no very discernible activity takes place. Few personnel are in evidence.

The light chemical industry is entirely different. It involves many different pieces of equipment of moderate size, often of stainless steel or lined with glass or enamel. This equipment is housed in buildings like those for, say, assembling light machinery. Numerous personnel are present. Both types of plant require large amounts of capital.