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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2012
Introduction
The chemicals industry manufactures commodities on a large scale. Table 8.1 shows the commodities that, on a worldwide basis, are produced in the greatest amounts. Some industries use significant amounts of recycled material; this is the reason why annual production of pig iron is much less than that of steel. Production on this scale is very sensitive to the costs of raw materials, transport, and energy, and even small changes in synthetic efficiency can shift production patterns and have large socioeconomic impacts.
Environmental protection accounts for an increasing part of industrial costs, and we present here a survey of the chemicals industry because an understanding of why and how our society runs such a huge enterprise is a prerequisite for decision making on environmental issues.
Most production relies on energy whose origin is fossil carbon in a low oxidation state (see Table 8.3). Conversion of this fuel to energy requires a reduction of atmospheric O2 to water;d other reductions are also of industrial significance, such as the reduction of FeIII in Fe2O3 to Fe.
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