This article outlines our successful approach to the teaching of industrial organic chemistry, which has been used for several years. Ideally, the student of industrial organic chemistry will already have a background familiarity with traditional alkane, alkene, and aromatic chemistry and terminology, together with an acquaintance with teh placing and transformation of the common functional groups by classical laboratory reactions. A basic grounding in general chemistry could be sufficient, but progress would be slowed as the tradional organic chemistry would have to be covered alongside the industrial material. An understanding of the terminology and the practical operating details of chemical operations could also provide a useful background, as has been previously discussed in this forum. [1]
Raw Materials
Sugars, starch, wood, fats and oils, and other plant sources were the predominant sources of the small-scale organic chemicals production during the 18th and 19th centuries. Ethanol and other fermentation products, coating resins, turpentine, and medications were among the products of this period. Coal became a dominant source fo organic chemicals in the mid-19th century, only to be supplemented and then surpassed from the beginning of the 20th century in volume of utilization by petroleum and natural gas.
Price and stability of supply have always been the major factors in the selection of raw materials for products in which raw material options exist. Benzene, for example, used to be obtained primarily by fractionation of the pyrolysis products of coal. [2] Now nearly all the supply is from petroleum, either by fractionation of aromatic crudes or by cracker operations designed to convert ethane, propane, or naphtha to aromatics. In the early days of the rubber industry, the sole source of the raw latex was from the coagulated sap of rubber trees such as Hevea braziliensis. In the 1940s when Western access to the rubber plantations was cut off, large acreages of the desert guayule shrub were planted for latex production in the US. At the same time, inexpensive and reliable petroleum-based technologies were developed. Gradually production of petroleum-based synthetic rubber grew at the expense of natural sources, until by 1973, only about 22% of US rubber was produced from natural latex. But, erratically increased petroleum prices and decreased reliability of petroleum supply since then has raised the proportion of rubber from natural sources back to 27% in the States and 37% globally. [3]
Today, despite the price and supply changes, some 90% of all organic chemicals, plastics and synthetic fibers are produced from petroleum and natural gas and the remainder from coal and plant sources. [4,5] This vast organic chemical industry still consumes only 10% of the total …
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