Chemicals : Catalysing Industry

Think about the battery in your smartphone. The petrol in your car. The table you are reading this on. Or even that apple you ate this morning.

- Ong Xiang Hong

All of these items rely on a complex chain of chemicals to produce. Lithium-ion chemistry provides the highest energy density known for batteries. Automotive petrol is produced using a chemical process known as fractional distillation. Furniture is often treated with polyurethane to withstand wear and tear, as well as increase fire resistance. Apples are often treated with ethylene (a naturally occurring chemical) to improve their appearance on supermarket shelves.

THE MODERN CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

The modern chemical industry creates an immense variety of products with affect virtually every aspect of our lives. While many of the products from the industry, such as detergents, soaps and perfumes, are purchased directly by the consumer, others are used as intermediates to make other products. For example, in Asia, 70 per cent of chemicals manufactured are used to make products by other industries including other branches of the chemical industry itself. The industry uses a wide range of raw materials, from petroleum, to minerals, and even elements from the air itself.

Products of the chemical industry can be broadly divided into three categories: basic chemicals, specialty chemicals, and consumer chemicals. In general, basic or commodity chemicals are produced in mass quantities but low value, and specialty chemicals are the opposite: low quantities but high value. Of course, such a generalisation has many, many exceptions to it, especially in such a wide and varied industry.

Commodity chemicals also produce material at the lowest cost with a focus on production innovation, while specialty and fine chemicals focuses on product innovation and responding to rapid time to market product lifecycles. In general, the production process for manufacturing that supports the business driver in bulk chemicals is continuous process applications and with fine and specialty chemicals, it has traditionally been batch process applications.