Chemical industry

“ Compressed gases like air, oxygen, acetylene, alcohol and vinegar production from acetylene, wood, animal and mineral carbon industry, production of artificial gems, manufacturing of building materials like gypsum and cements, insecticides, utilization of starches are only a few of the important problems which are to be solved by Czech chemists for the good of Czech chemical industry.
The line of chemical industries in Czechoslovakia waiting for chemists and enterprising men is really inexhaustible. ”

“ The chemical industry is also one of the most dynamic sectors in most countries, including many developing ones. Yet this industry, together with its products, can have a particularly severe impact on the environment. I has given rise to a host of new problems both of product and process pollution. It continues to generate an increasingly wider rang of products and wastes whose effects, especially long-term ones, on human health and the environment are not precisely known. Major accidents have taken place, and the safety record of the industry has been challenged in recent years. ”

“ The chemical industry of the United States has not made as rapid gains either in the relative value of its products, in the supply of the home market, or in the distribution of exports as accomplished by many other industries. ”

“ The above analysis can leave us with no doubt in our minds that the organic chemical industry is the logical place for efficient chemical warfare production. It cannot leave us unconvinced as to the vital importance of the dye industry in national defence. ”

“ The manufactories of artificial perfumes, on the other hand, are real laboratories of chemical products where the habitual agents of chemical industry are employed, requiring the intervention of chemists and engineers, and are established by preference at the great industrial centers. ”

“ It came to be employed extensively for absorbing ammonia in the illuminating-gas industry, which was in its infancy one hundred years ago. New industries such as the manufacture of “superphosphates” as artificial fertilizers, the refining of petroleum, the manufacture of artificial dyestuffs and many other modern chemical products have greatly increased the demand for it, while its employment in the production of nitric and other acids, and for many other purposes not already mentioned, has been very great. ”

“ But the conditions are quite different in the purely chemical branch of the industry, the object of which is to convert crude materials by means of numerous chemical processes and chemical forces into more precious ones; where a new process devised by a chemist revolutionizes the industries and makes the old processes unprofitable, even if they are performed by the most ingenious appliances constructed by the most talented engineer ”

“ A manufacturer without chemical knowledge, who is carrying on an industry which, like the manufacture of colours, rests entirely upon a chemical foundation, will constantly be compelled to seek advice from a scientific chemist. ”

“ LeBlanc’s method is an extremely complicated one. To conduct the process at all requires chemical knowledge of the most varied kind. And to apply the improvements that have been worked out in the laboratory, and to carry into practice the many subsidiary manufactures that have sprung from this main industry, demands so much technical ability that it has been said that this manufacture is not merely the foundation of the immense chemical industries of today, but is also the guiding spirit in them. ”

“ Further, for progressive and flexible organic chemical production, some such difference will always exist between the modern dye industry and factories or arsenals improvised or maintained to meet specific emergencies. ”

“ He tells us that the commanding position of Germany's chemical industry is in no way due to Nature's bounty, for she is largely dependent on foreign nations for the supply of chemical raw products, which she works up into chemical manufactures. The great success of Germany's chemical industry is attributed by Mr. ”

“ In the cement industry, the chemist has ascertained new ingredients, has utilized theretofore waste products for this purpose, has reduced the waste heaps of many industries and made them his starting material; he has standardized methods of manufacture, introduced methods of chemical control and has insured constancy and permanency of quality and quantity of output. In the sugar industry, the chemist has been active for so long a time that "the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." The sugar industry without the chemist is unthinkable. ”

“ They extended their markets in foreign countries, so that now the Standard sells the larger part of its products outside the United States. They established chemical research laboratories which devised new and inexpensive methods for refining the product and developed invaluable byproducts, such as paraffin, naphtha, vaseline, and lubricating oils. It is impossible to study the career of the Standard Oil Company without concluding that we have here an example of a supreme business intelligence working in a field which gave the widest possible scope of action. ”

“ In consequence thereof we now see that these large factories, devoted to the chemical industries which have drawn into their circle the manufacture of all the heavy chemicals, the production of the intermediary products from the distillation of wood and coal-tar, the finished materials being aniline and alizarine dye-stuffs, indigo, pharmaceutical and photographic products, artificial sweeteners and artificial perfumes, are managed exclusively by scientific chemists. The practical man was forced to yield to the well-educated theoretical man. ”

“ In larger works where dust is generated this should be drawn away at the point where it is produced. This applies also to processes in the chemical industries where lead or lead compounds are used, seeing that no substitute is possible. ”

“ As I have said, the manufacture of chemical products is not so pleasant or so picturesque in itself as the manufacture of plate-glass and mirrors. Within the last decade the output of sulphuric acid alone from the company's works has more than doubled, and now amounts to more than 200,000 tons a year. ”

“ One of the most interesting and important branches of economy at the present day is the recovery of agents such as ammonia and ethers which had been utilized in chemical manufactures, and re-employing them indefinitely afterwards in repeating the same process. ”

“ The enormous quantity of tar resulting from our gas manufacture furnishes the raw material for the production of a multitude of valuable substances—colouring-matters, medicines, perfumes, flavouring-matters, burning and lubricating oils, &c. Out of this unsavoury waste material of the gas-works, the researches of chemists have enabled a great industry to spring up which is of continually growing importance. ”

“ It is clear to the intelligent observer that in these times of intensely keen competition, the manufacturer will, sooner or later, inevitably be driven to seek a considerable percentage of his profits in the utilization of by-products that now go to waste or bring but little return. The men to solve the manufacturing problems of the future will be chemical engineers. Broadly speaking, comparatively little has been done in this field in the United States, and its possibilities are incalculable. ”

“ Another point not mentioned above in connection with these industries is the training of chemists, chemical engineers and the building up of plants for the manufacture of chemicals, all of which are necessary sources of supply for wartime needs. Chemists are needed in the field, in the laboratory and in manufacturing plants. The greater their number, the more efficiently can these materials be handled, and since chemicals as such will probably cause more than 50 per cent of all casualties in future wars, their value is almost unlimited. ”

“ We must content ourselves with saying that most modern producers are of the form of a tower in which a thick bed of fuel is partially burnt and partly gasified under the action of a blast of air mixed with steam. The chemical actions that take place are complicated, but the final result is the production of a gas containing from 2 to 8 or 10 per cent. of carbonic acid, 10 to 20 per cent. of hydrogen, 8 to 25 per cent. of carbonic oxide (CO) , 1 to 3 per cent. methane (CH4) , and 45 to 60 per cent. of nitrogen, with varying quantities of moisture, tarry matter, and ammonia. ”

“ We are beginning to learn a better economy in dealing with the inorganic world. The utilization—or, as the Germans more happily call it, the Verwerthung, the BEWORTHING—of waste from metallurgical, chemical, and manufacturing establishments, is among the most important results of the application of science to industrial purposes. The incidental products from the laboratories of manufacturing chemists often become more valuable than those for the preparation of which they were erected. ”

“ The research worker's nearest confidante and laboratory companion might be unaware that he was developing some new vitally important chemical for warfare. No serious person can claim the possibility of a check upon such research. If, then, the Government of any country desires to provide its chemical factories with suitable subjects for chemical warfare production, these can be produced under ANY international arrangements, however prohibitive. ”

“ And it has been stated by an eminent authority in such matters that we might save 500,000 tons of coal a year by economizing the waste heat of furnaces, by purifying the coal, coking it, etc. In a single chemical manufactory, out of about two thousand tons of hydrochloric acid used per annum, about eight hundred tons have been allowed to flow away as a polluting substance, because it was not possible to utilise it. The loss of material from a single large glass works equals fourteen hundred tons per annum, and a value of £8,000. ”

“ The chemist is even more ingenious and more of a benefactor than his predecessor of the nineteenth century. He has produced from coal oil, in paying quantities, both sugar and vinegar; and has also solved the problem of making sugar from starch.
The majority of fabrics are rendered, by chemical processes, proof against fire and mildew; and the law renders the use of such fireproof substances compulsory where wood, cloth or paper is used in building construction.
Medical and chemical science has so far advanced that special foods are devised for particular parts of the body. ”

“ It governs the transformation of the salts, minerals and humus of our fields and the components of the air into corn, wheat, cotton and the innumerable other products of the soil; it governs no less the transformation of crude ores into steel and alloys, which, with the cunning born of chemical knowledge, may be given practically any conceivable quality of hardness, elasticity, toughness or strength. And exactly the same thing may be said of the hundreds of national activities that lie between the two extremes of agriculture and steel manufacture! ”

“ For fuel a pound of coal is about equal to two pounds of wood, and a pound of gasoline to three pounds of wood in heating value, so there would be a great loss in efficiency and economy if the world had to go back to a wood basis. But when that time shall come, as, of course, it must come some time, the wood will doubtless not be burned in its natural state but will be converted into hydrogen and carbon monoxide in a gas producer or will be distilled in closed ovens giving charcoal and gas and saving the by-products, the tar and acid liquors. ”

“ The time for the development of the organic chemical industries on a large scale has not yet arrived. As I have shown before, the Germans are masters in manufacture where numberless products are employed in a series of reactions which finally lead to the finished product, and require manual labor, which can not possibly be replaced by machinery, while Americans may claim to be masters where manufactures on a large scale are concerned, which can be done by machinery. ”

“ This is not the only reason, however, for the unique war importance of organic chemicals. It so happens that many of them are essential to our daily life, as dyes, drugs, photographic and other synthetic products. Industries, therefore, have arisen for their manufacture. ”

“ Controlling Factors;—Rapid Manufacture.—Certain well-defined factors hold a controlling position in the chemical initiative. Before any chemical discovery can be used for surprise on the front a second step must occur; this is large scale manufacture. This period is vital to surprise. Success in chemical warfare is largely dependent on secrecy, which means achieving production in the shortest possible time, and this is particularly important at the commencement of hostilities. ”

“ There are several chemical processes which interruption will extremely injure, and others which it totally destroys, and as on the whole they in general are of a nature in which interference of others is most peculiarly vexatious, in all probability, if the excise be extended to manufactures of this nature, it will eventually put a stop to most of them, and greatly injure the revenue by causing thereby to cease the duties which at present arise from the exports and imports to a large amount, now depending on the chemical trade of Great Britain. ”

“ These industries gave a powerful impetus to the manufacture of chemicals, and the works at St Rollox developed rapidly. Among prominent chemical industries are to be reckoned the alkali trades—including soda, bleaching powder and soap-making—the preparation of alum and prussiates of potash, bichromate of potash, white lead and other pigments, dynamite and gunpowder. Glass-making and paper-making are also carried on, and there are several breweries and distilleries, besides factories for the making of aerated waters, starch, dextrine and matches. ”