The development history of the chemical industry
The history of chemical processing before the formation of industry can be traced back to ancient times from the mid-18th century. Since then, humans have been able to use chemical processing methods to make products. Some daily necessities, such as pottery making, brewing, etc. At that time, the production scale was small, the technology was backward, and it could only be regarded as manual craftsmanship. At this stage, inorganic chemical industry has begun to take shape, organic chemical industry is taking shape, and polymer chemical industry is in its infancy.
In the middle of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution occurred in Britain. The emergence of machines promoted the textile industry. Improvements in bleaching and dyeing technology of textiles required inorganic products such as soda ash and chlorine. Chemical fertilizers were needed in agriculture, and the mining industry A large amount of explosives was needed, so the chemical industry began to form and develop greatly.
In the 1740s, a British leader used the lead chamber method to produce sulfuric acid from sulfur and saltpeter. This method has been used for almost 100 years. Since the industrialization of alum catalysts for contact production of sulfuric acid in the early 20th century, the contact method has become the main method of sulfuric acid production. In 1783, France's N. Lubrand proposed an alkali production method using salt, coal, limestone, sulfuric acid, etc. as raw materials. This method comprehensively utilizes raw materials. In addition to producing alkali, it also produces Glauber's salt, sodium thiosulfate, caustic soda, and hydrochloric acid. , bleaching powder, etc., forming a comprehensive production process. The design principles of chemical unit operations such as gas scrubbing, solid calcination, crystallization, filtration, and drying are still used today and have become the basis for chemical unit operations. In 1861, Belgium's Solvay realized the industrialization of ammonia-alkali production and made alkali production continuous. Due to the high purity and low price of ammonia-alkali process products, it has replaced the Lubrand process and become the main production method of soda ash. Hou Debang, a famous Chinese chemical expert, began to devote himself to the research of joint alkali production method in 1938 and created Hou's alkali production method. The chlor-alkali industry that electrolyzed table salt emerged at the end of the 19th century. In this way, the production of acids and alkali, the basis of the entire chemical industry, has begun to take shape.
In order to adapt to the development of agriculture, phosphate fertilizer production began in 1841. After 1870, the potash industry was established. Ammonia was discovered by Priestley in 1754 when he heated ammonium chloride and limestone. The composition of ammonia was determined through climate analysis. On the basis of basic theoretical research, after more than 100 years of efforts, the synthesis of ammonia was achieved in 1913. of industrialization. In 1916, the process of oxidizing ammonia to produce nitric acid was realized. The emergence of the synthetic ammonia industry marks that the chemical industry has entered a new stage. It not only produces cheap ammonia and nitric acid, but also provides good technical conditions for the organic synthesis industry.
In the mid-19th century, with the development of the iron-making industry and the city's requirements for gas and industrial fuels, the development of the coking industry and the gas industry was promoted. Later, compounds such as benzene, toluene, xylene, naphthalene, anthracene, and phenol were separated from coal tar, a by-product of coking. These substances are important raw materials for organic synthesis, especially fuel synthesis. In the second half of the 19th century, the organic synthesis industry with coal tar as the theme was formed, and the utilization of coal tar gradually formed a coal chemical industry system.
After the development of the textile industry, natural dyes could not meet the needs; with the development of the steel industry and coking industry, the by-product coal tar needed to be utilized. Chemists used their achievements in organic chemistry to separate coal tar into tar, tar, anthracene, phenanthrene, etc. In 1856, the British synthesized aniline violet dye. After analysis, they determined that the structure of natural alizarin was dihydroxyanthraquinone. They used anthracene in coal tar as raw material and went through oxidation, substitution, hydrolysis, rearrangement and other reactions to imitate it. The exact same product as natural alizarin. Similarly, the pharmaceutical industry and perfume industry have also successively synthesized chemicals that are identical to natural products, and the varieties are increasing day by day. In 1867, the Swedes invented the Dynamite explosive (see), which was widely used in mining and military industry.
Pesticides have been used very early. In the 1940s, Swiss P.H. Miller invented the first organochlorine pesticide DDT, and then developed a series of organochlorine and organophosphorus pesticides, plant-based Hormones, etc., and carbamate pesticides such as carbaryl were produced in the 1950s. These pesticides are highly toxic and cause serious environmental pollution. Therefore, organic pesticides with high efficiency, low toxicity, and non-polluting environment have been researched and developed, such as arachnids, fungicides, herbicides and antibiotic pesticides.
In 1854, Silliman established a crude oil fractionation device. With the invention of gasoline and diesel engines, the mining and processing of oil was promoted. In 1923, vacuum distillation appeared, making petroleum refining develop into a modern process. processing route.
The petrochemical industry began to emerge in the 1920s and achieved great development in the 1960s, thus forming the second industrial revolution. Many petrochemicals have brought traditional materials into human daily life, providing various cheap and high-quality items. In the 1940s, the successful development of catalytic cracking technology to produce gasoline and emulsion polymerization technology to produce styrene-butadiene rubber promoted the development of the petrochemical industry. In the 1950s, many products produced from coal chemical industry, including olefins, aromatic hydrocarbons, ammonia, etc., were gradually converted to production using oil and natural gas. At present, more than 90% of organic chemical products are derived from petroleum and natural gas, and the petrochemical industry has become a very important basic industrial sector.
At that time, there was another pillar of organic chemical production, namely acetylene chemical industry. In 1895, the first factory was established to produce calcium carbide (i.e., calcium carbide) using coal and limestone as raw materials by electrothermal method. The calcium carbide was then hydrolyzed to produce acetylene, which was used as a starting point to produce a series of basic organic raw materials such as acetaldehyde and acetic acid. After its development in the mid-20th century, calcium carbide consumed too much energy, and most of the original acetylene series products were produced as raw materials.
In the 1930s, a polymer chemistry system was established, and the chemical industry of polymer materials developed rapidly. In 1872, phenolic resin was obtained. In 1938, nylon 66 achieved industrial production. Later, nylon 6 and polyester fiber were invented one after another. So far, polyester and acrylic are the fastest growing and most produced varieties among synthetic fibers. In the 1930s, the production of chloroprene rubber was realized in the United States, and soon styrene-butadiene rubber and nitrile rubber were produced. At the same time, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene, high-pressure polyethylene, and polytetrafluoroethylene have successively achieved industrial production, and the plastics industry has developed rapidly. So far, three major polymer chemical industry systems have been formed, mainly composed of synthetic materials. Specialty chemicals have been further developed, which can enhance or impart specific functions to another product in a small amount and obtain high use value. For example, food and feed additives, plastic and rubber additives, special chemicals for leather, papermaking, oil fields, etc., as well as adhesives, antioxidants, surfactants, water treatment agents, catalysts, etc. As far as catalysts are concerned, the development of modern instruments such as electron microscopes and electron spectrometers has helped to understand the catalytic mechanism, and various special catalysts have been prepared, marking a new stage for catalysts.
Since the 1960s and 1970s in the modern chemical industry, competition among enterprises in the chemical industry has been fierce. On the one hand, due to an in-depth understanding of the reaction process, the production equipment of some traditional basic chemical products has become increasingly large-scale. ization to reduce costs. At the same time, due to the rise of the new technological revolution, new requirements were put forward for the chemical industry, which promoted the technological progress of the chemical industry and developed fine chemicals, ultrapure substances, new structural materials and functional materials from the early 20th century to the post-war period. From the 1960s to the 1970s, this was the main stage when the chemical industry truly became large-scale production, and some major fields were formed during this period. Synthetic ammonia and petrochemicals have been developed, polymer chemicals have been developed, and fine chemicals have gradually emerged. At the beginning of this period, G.E. Davis of the United Kingdom and A.D. Little of the United States proposed the concept of unit operations, laying the foundation for chemical engineering. It has promoted the development of production technology, and both device scale and product output have grown rapidly. .
In recent years, the rapid development of high-tech and new materials, such as the application of composite materials, information materials, nanomaterials and high-temperature superconductors, has provided the chemical industry with broader development prospects. The products of the chemical industry have penetrated into every aspect of our lives and occupy an extremely important position. The chemical industry is one of the pillar industries of the national economy. In recent years, China's chemical industry has developed rapidly, with an increase of 10.71% in 1997. In the future, it will give priority to the development of petrochemicals, fine chemicals, and agricultural chemicals, and will provide people with more new products.