Chemical industry

• 1. Introduction

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  The chemical industry sits at the foundation of nearly everything in modern life. It converts raw materials, oil, natural gas, air, water, metals, and minerals, into the substances that build homes, grow food, heal the sick, and make the plastics in every room you inhabit. Chemicals are nearly a five-trillion-dollar global enterprise today. The EU and U.S. together rank as the world's largest producers. Yet this vast industry has roots in a single, humble bottleneck: how do you bleach a piece of cloth without waiting weeks in the sun? How do you make enough glass and soap when the forests supplying your raw materials are disappearing? The answers to those questions gave rise to factories that reshaped the landscape of Scotland, France, and England and set the template for the industrial world. This is the story of how chemistry moved from the apothecary's shelf to the center of the global economy.

• 2. Birth in Sulfur and Salt

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  In 1736, a pharmacist named Joshua Ward developed a process for producing sulfuric acid by heating sulfur with saltpeter and allowing the sulfur to oxidize and combine with water. It was the first practical method for making the substance at any meaningful scale. Thirteen years later, John Roebuck and Samuel Garbett took that process and built the first large-scale factory for sulfuric acid at Prestonpans, Scotland, in 1749, using leaden condensing chambers that could handle production at industrial volumes.

  Sulfuric acid quickly found a new purpose. By the middle of the 18th century, cloth-makers had begun using it as a more efficient bleaching agent, replacing the ancient practice of soaking fabric in stale urine or sour milk and leaving it out in sunlight for long periods. That old method created a severe production bottleneck, and the pressure to eliminate it would soon produce the first great chemical industrial enterprise.

  Charles Tennant's solution was bleaching powder, made by reacting chlorine with dry slaked lime. It was cheap, it worked, and demand exploded. He opened the St Rollox Chemical Works north of Glasgow, and production climbed from just 52 tons in 1799 to almost 10,000 tons just five years later.

  The parallel challenge of producing soda ash, essential for glass, textile, soap, and paper, had its own history. When Western Europe's forests shrank and wood ash became too scarce and costly to supply the soda trade, the French Academy of Sciences offered a prize of 2,400 livres for a workable method using sea salt instead. Nicolas Leblanc patented his answer in 1791 and built a plant at Saint-Denis, but the French Revolution denied him the prize money he had won.

• 3. Britain's Soda Empire

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  William Losh built the first British soda works on the River Tyne in 1816, but heavy tariffs on salt production kept the industry small for nearly a decade. When those tariffs were repealed in 1824, the British soda industry expanded rapidly. James Muspratt's chemical works in Liverpool and Charles Tennant's complex near Glasgow grew into the largest chemical production centers anywhere in the world.

  By the 1870s, British soda output had reached 200,000 tons annually, exceeding the combined output of every other nation on earth. The sheer scale of these factories created a new problem: enormous quantities of alkaline waste were vented into the surrounding environment. That pollution provoked one of the first pieces of environmental legislation, passed in 1863, which required close inspection of factories and imposed heavy fines on those that exceeded pollution limits. Methods were subsequently devised to convert the alkali waste into useful byproducts rather than discharging it.

  The Leblanc process that powered this expansion was not without a successor. Ernest Solvay, a Belgian industrial chemist, developed a cleaner and cheaper alternative in 1861. In 1864, Solvay and his brother Alfred built a plant in Charleroi, Belgium, and a decade later they expanded into a larger facility in Nancy, France. Ludwig Mond visited Solvay to acquire rights to use the new process, then partnered with John Brunner to form Brunner, Mond and Co. and build a Solvay plant at Winnington, England. Between 1873 and 1880, Mond made several refinements that removed byproducts inhibiting the production of sodium carbonate, turning a promising process into a genuine commercial success.

• 4. Dyes, Plastics, and Petrochemicals

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  William Henry Perkin made a discovery in London that would transform the look of the industrial world. Working with aniline, he produced a crude mixture that, when extracted with alcohol, yielded a substance of intense purple color. He had created the first synthetic dye and, separately, developed the first synthetic perfumes. German industry moved quickly to capitalize on that science.

  The three major German firms, BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst, together produced several hundred different dyes. By 1913, German industries were supplying almost 90% of the world's dyestuffs and selling approximately 80% of that production abroad. Chemical dye laboratories in late 19th-century Germany became the setting in which industrial research and development practices were first established, making the synthetic dye industry one of the first science-based industries in history.

  Alexander Parkes, an English metallurgist, introduced the first plastic in 1856 when he patented Parkesine, a celluloid based on nitrocellulose treated with various solvents. The material was exhibited at the 1862 London International Exhibition. In 1885, William Lever and his brother James began industrial production of soap in Lancashire, using a modern chemical process invented by William Hough Watson that worked with glycerin and vegetable oils.

  The petrochemical industry traces back to Scottish chemist James Young and Canadian Abraham Pineo Gesner. Large-scale manufacture of chemical products from fossil fuels began in the early 19th century; by 1822, the Bonnington Chemical Works in Edinburgh was processing coal tar and ammoniacal liquor residues from coal gas manufacture to produce naphtha, creosote, pitch, carbon black, and ammonium chloride. In the United States, Herbert Henry Dow's use of electrochemistry to produce chemicals from brine became a commercial success that helped build the country's chemical industry. By the 1920s, firms had consolidated into large conglomerates: IG Farben in Germany, Rhone-Poulenc in France, Imperial Chemical Industries in Britain, and DuPont in America.

• 5. What the Industry Makes

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  Polymers and plastics make up roughly 80% of the industry's worldwide output. Polyethylene, the largest-volume polymer product, is used mainly in packaging films, milk bottles, containers, and pipe. Polyvinyl chloride serves principally as piping for construction markets. Polypropylene spans markets from packaging and appliances to clothing and carpeting. Polystyrene goes primarily into appliances, packaging, toys, and recreation.

  Beyond polymers, the industry divides into several major categories. Basic chemicals account for roughly 35% to 37% of dollar output and include bulk petrochemicals, inorganic chemicals, and fertilizers. Inorganic chemicals, the oldest category at about 12% of revenue, cover salt, chlorine, caustic soda, soda ash, and acids including sulfuric, nitric, and phosphoric acid. Fertilizers are the smallest category at about 6% and include phosphates, ammonia, and potash chemicals.

  Life sciences account for about 30% of the chemistry business's dollar output. This category spans pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, animal health products, vitamins, and pesticides. Although much smaller in volume than other sectors, life science products typically command prices over ten dollars per pound and carry research and development spending at 15% to 25% of sales. Government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration scrutinize these products closely.

  Specialty chemicals, representing roughly 20% to 25% of output, are valued for what they do rather than what they contain. In 2012, the global specialty chemical market excluding fine chemicals was worth $546 billion, broken down as 33% paints, coatings, and surface treatments; 27% advanced polymers; 14% adhesives and sealants; 13% additives; and 13% pigments and inks. Consumer products, including soaps, detergents, and cosmetics, account for about 10% of output and grow at roughly 0.8 to 1.0 times GDP.

• 6. Geography of Production

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  The largest-volume chemicals in the world are made in a relatively small number of places. Along the Gulf Coast of the United States, the manufacturing clusters in Texas and Louisiana concentrate enormous petrochemical capacity. On Teesside in the United Kingdom, a single cluster, the Northeast of England Process Industry Cluster, accounts for some 50% of the country's petrochemical and commodity chemical output. Rotterdam in the Netherlands serves as another major hub.

  In the United States, roughly 170 major chemical companies operate with more than 2,800 facilities outside the country and over 1,700 foreign subsidiaries or affiliates. U.S. chemical output stands at $750 billion a year, and the industry employs more than a million people in the country alone. The industry is also the second-largest consumer of energy in American manufacturing and spends over $5 billion annually on pollution control.

  Europe remains the world's biggest chemical trading region by volume, accounting for 43% of global exports and 37% of imports in the period the source covers. Five European countries, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and the Netherlands, account for 71% of the EU's chemical sales. Between 1991 and 2011, the European chemical industry's sales grew from 295 billion euros to 539 billion euros, yet its share of the world chemical market fell from 36% to 20% as production in emerging markets expanded. The source attributes 95% of that shift to China alone.

  In 2008, the United States produced $689 billion worth of chemicals, or 18.6% of total world chemical output, in a year when global shipments reached $3.16 trillion. The top-ranked chemical company by sales in 2015 was BASF, headquartered in Ludwigshafen, Germany, with chemical sales of $63.7 billion, ahead of Dow Chemical Company at $48.8 billion and China Petrochemical Corporation at $43.8 billion.