For better or worse, industrial chemicals are a fact of life; for all the bad publicity these substances receive, many manufacturing processes would not be possible without them. These chemicals are an integral of part industries such as oil refining, plastics, and metallurgy, just to name a few. We will look at some of the most common inorganic compounds, some organic compound, as well as applications for both types.

Inorganic chemicals are any chemicals or compounds that do not contain carbon such as soda ash, polymers, chlorine and ethyl acetate. Chlorine is obtained from salt, brine, and sodium hydroxide and is most often used in bleaching solutions, PVC and hydrochloric acid. The main source of hydrogen is air; oxygen is a compound formed of hydrogen and oxygen; the hydrogen molecules are separated from the oxygen molecules, which can then be processed into several different industrial chemicals including hydrochloric acid, and many that are used in the petrol refining process (i.e. hydro alkylation).

Organic chemicals are all those that contain carbon; most were originally obtain by heating coal, such as natural gas. Another organic compound commonly used as an industrial chemical is ethylene, which is a key component in LDPE (low density polyethylene) and HDPE (high density polyethylene), which are used to make plastic, one of the most heavily used materials in the world.

Our world would be a very different place is industrial chemicals didn’t exist. The challenge, then, is to find a way to responsibly use these products in order to do as little environmental damage as possible.