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113-542: The Chemours Company ( / k ɛ ˈ m ɔːr z / , kem- ORZ ) is an American chemical company that was founded in July 2015 as a spin-off from DuPont . It has its corporate headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware , United States. Chemours is the manufacturer of Teflon , the brand name of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), known for its anti-stick properties. It also produces titanium dioxide and refrigerant gases . It

226-400: A better way could be found to remove the seed. Eli Whitney responded to the challenge by inventing the inexpensive cotton gin . A man using a cotton gin could remove seed from as much upland cotton in one day as would previously have taken two months to process, working at the rate of one pound of cotton per day. These advances were capitalised on by entrepreneurs , of whom the best known

339-520: A cottage industry under the putting-out system . Occasionally, the work was done in the workshop of a master weaver. Under the putting-out system, home-based workers produced under contract to merchant sellers, who often supplied the raw materials. In the off-season, the women, typically farmers' wives, did the spinning and the men did the weaving. Using the spinning wheel , it took anywhere from four to eight spinners to supply one handloom weaver. The flying shuttle , patented in 1733 by John Kay —with

452-604: A detailed account of the term. Economic historians and authors such as Mendels, Pomeranz , and Kridte argue that proto-industrialisation in parts of Europe, the Muslim world , Mughal India , and China created the social and economic conditions that led to the Industrial Revolution, thus causing the Great Divergence . Some historians, such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts , have argued that

565-662: A global trading empire with colonies in North America and the Caribbean. Britain had major military and political hegemony on the Indian subcontinent ; particularly with the proto-industrialised Mughal Bengal , through the activities of the East India Company . The development of trade and the rise of business were among the major causes of the Industrial Revolution. Developments in law also facilitated

678-489: A legal system that supported business; and financial capital available to invest. Once industrialisation began in Great Britain, new factors can be added: the eagerness of British entrepreneurs to export industrial expertise and the willingness to import the process. Britain met the criteria and industrialized starting in the 18th century, and then it exported the process to western Europe (especially Belgium, France, and

791-421: A mechanised industry. Other inventors increased the efficiency of the individual steps of spinning (carding, twisting and spinning, and rolling) so that the supply of yarn increased greatly. Steam power was then applied to drive textile machinery. Manchester acquired the nickname Cottonopolis during the early 19th century owing to its sprawl of textile factories. Although mechanisation dramatically decreased

904-739: A modern chemical process invented by William Hough Watson that used glycerin and vegetable oils . By the 1920s, chemical firms consolidated into large conglomerates ; IG Farben in Germany, Rhône-Poulenc in France and Imperial Chemical Industries in Britain. Dupont became a major chemicals firm in the early 20th century in America. Polymers and plastics such as polyethylene , polypropylene , polyvinyl chloride , polyethylene terephthalate , polystyrene and polycarbonate comprise about 80% of

1017-726: A more even thickness. The technology was developed with the help of John Wyatt of Birmingham . Paul and Wyatt opened a mill in Birmingham which used their rolling machine powered by a donkey. In 1743, a factory opened in Northampton with 50 spindles on each of five of Paul and Wyatt's machines. This operated until about 1764. A similar mill was built by Daniel Bourn in Leominster , but this burnt down. Both Lewis Paul and Daniel Bourn patented carding machines in 1748. Based on two sets of rollers that travelled at different speeds, it

1130-406: A number of subsequent improvements including an important one in 1747—doubled the output of a weaver, worsening the imbalance between spinning and weaving. It became widely used around Lancashire after 1760 when John's son, Robert , invented the dropbox, which facilitated changing thread colors. Lewis Paul patented the roller spinning frame and the flyer-and- bobbin system for drawing wool to

1243-575: A plant in Charleroi Belgium. In 1874, they expanded into a larger plant in Nancy , France. The new process proved more economical and less polluting than the Leblanc method, and its use spread. In the same year, Ludwig Mond visited Solvay to acquire the rights to use his process, and he and John Brunner formed Brunner, Mond & Co. , and built a Solvay plant at Winnington , England. Mond

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1356-410: A reverberatory furnace, coal or coke could be used as fuel. The puddling process continued to be used until the late 19th century when iron was being displaced by mild steel. Because puddling required human skill in sensing the iron globs, it was never successfully mechanised. Rolling was an important part of the puddling process because the grooved rollers expelled most of the molten slag and consolidated

1469-438: A simple, wooden framed machine that only cost about £6 for a 40-spindle model in 1792 and was used mainly by home spinners. The jenny produced a lightly twisted yarn only suitable for weft, not warp. The spinning frame or water frame was developed by Richard Arkwright who, along with two partners, patented it in 1769. The design was partly based on a spinning machine built by Kay, who was hired by Arkwright. For each spindle

1582-630: A site separate from the production plant(s). The scale of chemical manufacturing tends to be organized from largest in volume ( petrochemicals and commodity chemicals ), to specialty chemicals , and the smallest, fine chemicals . The petrochemical and commodity chemical manufacturing units are on the whole single product continuous processing plants. Not all petrochemical or commodity chemical materials are made in one single location, but groups of related materials often are to induce industrial symbiosis as well as material, energy and utility efficiency and other economies of scale . Those chemicals made on

1695-625: A variety of cotton cloth, some of exceptionally fine quality. Cotton was a difficult raw material for Europe to obtain before it was grown on colonial plantations in the Americas. The early Spanish explorers found Native Americans growing unknown species of excellent quality cotton: sea island cotton ( Gossypium barbadense ) and upland green seeded cotton Gossypium hirsutum . Sea island cotton grew in tropical areas and on barrier islands of Georgia and South Carolina but did poorly inland. Sea island cotton began being exported from Barbados in

1808-493: A weight. The weights kept the twist from backing up before the rollers. The bottom rollers were wood and metal, with fluting along the length. The water frame was able to produce a hard, medium-count thread suitable for warp, finally allowing 100% cotton cloth to be made in Britain. Arkwright and his partners used water power at a factory in Cromford , Derbyshire in 1771, giving the invention its name. Samuel Crompton invented

1921-579: A wide variety of solid, liquid, and gaseous materials. Most of these products serve to manufacture other items, although a smaller number go directly to consumers. Solvents , pesticides , lye , washing soda , and portland cement provide a few examples of products used by consumers. The industry includes manufacturers of inorganic - and organic -industrial chemicals, ceramic products, petrochemicals, agrochemicals, polymers and rubber (elastomers), oleochemicals (oils, fats, and waxes), explosives, fragrances and flavors. Examples of these products are shown in

2034-430: Is Arkwright. He is credited with a list of inventions, but these were actually developed by such people as Kay and Thomas Highs ; Arkwright nurtured the inventors, patented the ideas, financed the initiatives, and protected the machines. He created the cotton mill which brought the production processes together in a factory, and he developed the use of power—first horsepower and then water power—which made cotton manufacture

2147-477: Is a portmanteau of the words chemical and Nemours, a nod to DuPont's full name, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. The company's CC ticker symbol, is also a play on DuPont's DD symbol; it was also formerly used by the electronics retail Circuit City prior to its bankruptcy in 2009. The spin-off was completed on July 1, 2015, and Chemours' stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on

2260-423: Is a list of the top 25 chemical companies by chemical sales in 2015. (Note: Chemical sales represent only a portion of total sales for some companies.) Top chemical companies by chemical sales in 2015. [REDACTED] London , United Kingdom From the perspective of chemical engineers, the chemical industry involves the use of chemical processes such as chemical reactions and refining methods to produce

2373-578: Is currently being sued by the PA Attorney General, for knowingly exposing the public to PFAS. In October 2013, DuPont announced that it was planning to spin off its " performance chemicals " business into a new publicly traded company in mid-2015. DuPont filed its initial Form 10 with the SEC in December 2014 and announced that the new company would be called "The Chemours Company." The name

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2486-616: The Bonnington Chemical Works in Edinburgh to make naphtha , pitch oil (later called creosote ), pitch , lampblack ( carbon black ) and sal ammoniac ( ammonium chloride ). Ammonium sulphate fertiliser, asphalt road surfacing , coke oil and coke were later added to the product line. The late 19th century saw an explosion in both the quantity of production and the variety of chemicals that were manufactured. Large chemical industries arose in Germany and later in

2599-653: The electrical telegraph , widely introduced in the 1840s and 1850s in the United Kingdom and the United States, were not powerful enough to drive high rates of economic growth. Rapid economic growth began to reoccur after 1870, springing from a new group of innovations in what has been called the Second Industrial Revolution . These included new steel-making processes , mass production , assembly lines , electrical grid systems,

2712-456: The first pieces of environmental legislation to be passed in 1863. This provided for close inspection of the factories and imposed heavy fines on those exceeding the limits on pollution. Methods were devised to make useful byproducts from the alkali. The Solvay process was developed by the Belgian industrial chemist Ernest Solvay in 1861. In 1864, Solvay and his brother Alfred constructed

2825-488: The spinning mule in 1779, so called because it is a hybrid of Arkwright's water frame and James Hargreaves 's spinning jenny in the same way that a mule is the product of crossbreeding a female horse with a male donkey . Crompton's mule was able to produce finer thread than hand spinning and at a lower cost. Mule-spun thread was of suitable strength to be used as a warp and finally allowed Britain to produce highly competitive yarn in large quantities. Realising that

2938-791: The $ 546 billion global specialty chemical market was 33% Paints, Coating and Surface Treatments, 27% Advanced Polymer, 14% Adhesives and Sealants, 13% additives, and 13% pigments and inks. Speciality chemicals are sold as effect or performance chemicals. Sometimes they are mixtures of formulations, unlike " fine chemicals ," which are almost always single-molecule products. Consumer products include direct product sales of chemicals such as soaps , detergents , and cosmetics . Typical growth rates are 0.8 to 1.0 times GDP. Consumers rarely come into contact with basic chemicals. Polymers and specialty chemicals are materials that they encounter everywhere daily. Examples are plastics, cleaning materials, cosmetics, paints & coatings, electronics, automobiles and

3051-441: The 1650s. Upland green seeded cotton grew well on inland areas of the southern U.S. but was not economical because of the difficulty of removing seed, a problem solved by the cotton gin . A strain of cotton seed brought from Mexico to Natchez, Mississippi , in 1806 became the parent genetic material for over 90% of world cotton production today; it produced bolls that were three to four times faster to pick. The Age of Discovery

3164-544: The 1840s. The first synthetic dye was discovered by William Henry Perkin in London . He partly transformed aniline into a crude mixture which, when extracted with alcohol, produced a substance with an intense purple colour. He also developed the first synthetic perfumes. German industry quickly began to dominate the field of synthetic dyes. The three major firms BASF , Bayer , and Hoechst produced several hundred different dyes. By 1913, German industries produced almost 90% of

3277-924: The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Newman, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Jonathan Lock, and Financial Controller Camela Wisel were placed on administrative leave by the company's board due to members of senior management delaying payments to some vendors to aid incentive compensation and obtain a bigger bonus. The officer's actions violated the company's standards for ethics. Chemours manufactures and sells performance chemicals falling within three segments: Titanium Technologies ( titanium dioxide ); Fluoroproducts ( refrigerants and industrial fluoropolymer resins and derivatives including Freon , Teflon , Viton , Nafion , ECCtreme ECA and Krytox ); and Chemical Solutions ( cyanide , sulfuric acid , aniline , methylamines , and reactive metals). Chemical industry Various professionals are involved in

3390-537: The DuPont facility that manufactured Teflon was located. The documentary follows the personal stories and tribulations of several people who worked at the Parkersburg facility. In June 2023, Chemours (together with Dupont and Corteva) settled claims that they contaminated U.S. public water systems with toxic " forever chemicals " (PFAS) for $ 1.19 billion, with Chemours paying $ 592 million and DuPont and Corteva paying

3503-579: The EU and U.S. chemical companies are the world's largest producers. Sales of the chemical business can be divided into a few broad categories, including basic chemicals (about 35% - 37% of dollar output), life sciences (30%), specialty chemicals (20% - 25%) and consumer products (about 10%). Basic chemicals, or "commodity chemicals" are a broad chemical category including polymers, bulk petrochemicals and intermediates, other derivatives and basic industrials, inorganic chemicals , and fertilizers . Polymers are

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3616-531: The European Chemical industry saw its sales increase from 295 billion Euros to 539 billion Euros, a picture of constant growth. Despite this, the European industry's share of the world chemical market has fallen from 36% to 20%. This has resulted from the huge increase in production and sales in emerging markets like India and China. The data suggest that 95% of this impact is from China alone. In 2012

3729-788: The Food and Drug Administration. Pesticides, also called "crop protection chemicals", are about 10% of this category and include herbicides , insecticides , and fungicides . Specialty chemicals are a category of relatively high-valued, rapidly growing chemicals with diverse end product markets. Typical growth rates are one to three times GDP with prices over a dollar per pound. They are generally characterized by their innovative aspects. Products are sold for what they can do rather than for what chemicals they contain. Products include electronic chemicals, industrial gases , adhesives and sealants as well as coatings, industrial and institutional cleaning chemicals, and catalysts. In 2012, excluding fine chemicals,

3842-670: The German states) in the early 19th century. The United States copied the British model in the early 19th century, and Japan copied the Western European models in the late 19th century. The commencement of the Industrial Revolution is closely linked to a small number of innovations, beginning in the second half of the 18th century. By the 1830s, the following gains had been made in important technologies: In 1750, Britain imported 2.5 million pounds of raw cotton, most of which

3955-496: The Indian industry. Bar iron was the commodity form of iron used as the raw material for making hardware goods such as nails, wire, hinges, horseshoes, wagon tires, chains, etc., as well as structural shapes. A small amount of bar iron was converted into steel. Cast iron was used for pots, stoves, and other items where its brittleness was tolerable. Most cast iron was refined and converted to bar iron, with substantial losses. Bar iron

4068-425: The Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830. Rapid adoption of mechanized textiles spinning occurred in Britain in the 1780s, and high rates of growth in steam power and iron production occurred after 1800. Mechanised textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe and

4181-492: The Industrial Revolution spread to continental Europe and the United States , from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines ; new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes; the increasing use of water power and steam power ; the development of machine tools ; and the rise of the mechanised factory system . Output greatly increased, and

4294-577: The Scottish inventor James Beaumont Neilson in 1828, was the most important development of the 19th century for saving energy in making pig iron. By using preheated combustion air, the amount of fuel to make a unit of pig iron was reduced at first by between one-third using coke or two-thirds using coal; the efficiency gains continued as the technology improved. Hot blast also raised the operating temperature of furnaces, increasing their capacity. Using less coal or coke meant introducing fewer impurities into

4407-462: The Table below. Related industries include petroleum , glass , paint , ink , sealant , adhesive , pharmaceuticals and food processing . Chemical processes such as chemical reactions operate in chemical plants to form new substances in various types of reaction vessels. In many cases, the reactions take place in special corrosion-resistant equipment at elevated temperatures and pressures with

4520-505: The U.S. there are 170 major chemical companies. They operate internationally with more than 2,800 facilities outside the U.S. and 1,700 foreign subsidiaries or affiliates operating. The U.S. chemical output is $ 750 billion a year. The U.S. industry records large trade surpluses and employs more than a million people in the United States alone. The chemical industry is also the second largest consumer of energy in manufacturing and spends over $ 5 billion annually on pollution abatement. In Europe,

4633-575: The United States in the early 19th century, with important centres of textiles, iron and coal emerging in Belgium and the United States and later textiles in France. An economic recession occurred from the late 1830s to the early 1840s when the adoption of the Industrial Revolution's early innovations, such as mechanised spinning and weaving, slowed as their markets matured; and despite the increasing adoption of locomotives, steamboats and steamships, and hot blast iron smelting . New technologies such as

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4746-470: The United States. Production of artificial manufactured fertilizer for agriculture was pioneered by Sir John Lawes at his purpose-built Rothamsted Research facility. In the 1840s he established large works near London for the manufacture of superphosphate of lime . Processes for the vulcanization of rubber were patented by Charles Goodyear in the United States and Thomas Hancock in England in

4859-474: The Working Class in England in 1844 spoke of "an industrial revolution, a revolution which at the same time changed the whole of civil society". Although Engels wrote his book in the 1840s, it was not translated into English until the late 19th century, and his expression did not enter everyday language until then. Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee , whose 1881 lectures gave

4972-474: The chemical industry including chemical engineers, chemists and lab technicians. Although chemicals were made and used throughout history, the birth of the heavy chemical industry (production of chemicals in large quantities for a variety of uses) coincided with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution . One of the first chemicals to be produced in large amounts through industrial processes

5085-440: The chemical, plastics, and rubber sectors are among the largest industrial sectors. Together they generate about 3.2 million jobs in more than 60,000 companies. Since 2000 the chemical sector alone has represented 2/3 of the entire manufacturing trade surplus of the EU. In 2012, the chemical sector accounted for 12% of the EU manufacturing industry's added value. Europe remains the world's biggest chemical trading region with 43% of

5198-489: The clustering and integration mentioned above, some 50% of the United Kingdom's petrochemical and commodity chemicals are produced by the Northeast of England Process Industry Cluster on Teesside . Specialty chemical and fine chemical manufacturing are mostly made in discrete batch processes. These manufacturers are often found in similar locations but in many cases, they are to be found in multi-sector business parks. In

5311-471: The coal do not migrate into the metal. This technology was applied to lead from 1678 and to copper from 1687. It was also applied to iron foundry work in the 1690s, but in this case the reverberatory furnace was known as an air furnace. (The foundry cupola is a different, and later, innovation.) Coke pig iron was hardly used to produce wrought iron until 1755–56, when Darby's son Abraham Darby II built furnaces at Horsehay and Ketley where low sulfur coal

5424-409: The coke pig iron he made was not suitable for making wrought iron and was used mostly for the production of cast iron goods, such as pots and kettles. He had the advantage over his rivals in that his pots, cast by his patented process, were thinner and cheaper than theirs. In 1750, coke had generally replaced charcoal in the smelting of copper and lead and was in widespread use in glass production. In

5537-467: The column of materials (iron ore, fuel, slag) flowing down the blast furnace more porous and did not crush in the much taller furnaces of the late 19th century. As cast iron became cheaper and widely available, it began being a structural material for bridges and buildings. A famous early example is the Iron Bridge built in 1778 with cast iron produced by Abraham Darby III. However, most cast iron

5650-884: The consumer. Annually the American Chemistry Council tabulates the US production volume of the top 100 chemicals. In 2000, the aggregate production volume of the top 100 chemicals totaled 502 million tons, up from 397 million tons in 1990. Inorganic chemicals tend to be the largest volume but much smaller in dollar revenue due to their low prices. The top 11 of the 100 chemicals in 2000 were sulfuric acid (44 million tons), nitrogen (34), ethylene (28), oxygen (27), lime (22), ammonia (17), propylene (16), polyethylene (15), chlorine (13), phosphoric acid (13) and diammonium phosphates (12). The largest chemical producers today are global companies with international operations and plants in numerous countries. Below

5763-495: The cost of cotton cloth, by the mid-19th century machine-woven cloth still could not equal the quality of hand-woven Indian cloth, in part because of the fineness of thread made possible by the type of cotton used in India, which allowed high thread counts. However, the high productivity of British textile manufacturing allowed coarser grades of British cloth to undersell hand-spun and woven fabric in low-wage India, eventually destroying

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5876-487: The cotton textile industry in Britain was 2.6% in 1760, 17% in 1801, and 22.4% in 1831. Value added by the British woollen industry was 14.1% in 1801. Cotton factories in Britain numbered approximately 900 in 1797. In 1760, approximately one-third of cotton cloth manufactured in Britain was exported, rising to two-thirds by 1800. In 1781, cotton spun amounted to 5.1 million pounds, which increased to 56 million pounds by 1800. In 1800, less than 0.1% of world cotton cloth

5989-427: The country. Steam engines made the use of higher-pressure and volume blast practical; however, the leather used in bellows was expensive to replace. In 1757, ironmaster John Wilkinson patented a hydraulic powered blowing engine for blast furnaces. The blowing cylinder for blast furnaces was introduced in 1760 and the first blowing cylinder made of cast iron is believed to be the one used at Carrington in 1768 that

6102-516: The creation of the first great chemical industrial enterprise. His powder was made by reacting chlorine with dry slaked lime and proved to be a cheap and successful product. He opened the St Rollox Chemical Works , north of Glasgow , and production went from just 52 tons in 1799 to almost 10,000 tons just five years later. Soda ash was used since ancient times in the production of glass , textile , soap , and paper , and

6215-779: The data from the European Chemical Industry Council shows that five European countries account for 71% of the EU's chemicals sales. These are Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and the Netherlands. The chemical industry has seen growth in China, India, Korea, the Middle East, South East Asia, Nigeria and Brazil. The growth is driven by changes in feedstock availability and price, labor and energy costs, differential rates of economic growth and environmental pressures. Just as companies emerge as

6328-546: The dollar output of the chemistry business) include differentiated chemical and biological substances, pharmaceuticals , diagnostics, animal health products , vitamins , and pesticides . While much smaller in volume than other chemical sectors, their products tend to have high prices - over ten dollars per pound - growth rates of 1.5 to 6 times GDP , and research and development spending at 15 to 25% of sales. Life science products are usually produced with high specifications and are closely scrutinized by government agencies such as

6441-642: The economic and social changes occurred gradually and that the term revolution is a misnomer. This is still a subject of debate among some historians. Six factors facilitated industrialisation: high levels of agricultural productivity, such as that reflected in the British Agricultural Revolution , to provide excess manpower and food; a pool of managerial and entrepreneurial skills; available ports, rivers, canals, and roads to cheaply move raw materials and outputs; natural resources such as coal, iron, and waterfalls; political stability and

6554-688: The entry for "Industry": "The idea of a new social order based on major industrial change was clear in Southey and Owen , between 1811 and 1818, and was implicit as early as Blake in the early 1790s and Wordsworth at the turn of the [19th] century." The term Industrial Revolution applied to technological change was becoming more common by the late 1830s, as in Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui 's description in 1837 of la révolution industrielle . Friedrich Engels in The Condition of

6667-465: The expiration of the Arkwright patent would greatly increase the supply of spun cotton and lead to a shortage of weavers, Edmund Cartwright developed a vertical power loom which he patented in 1785. In 1776, he patented a two-man operated loom. Cartwright's loom design had several flaws, the most serious being thread breakage. Samuel Horrocks patented a fairly successful loom in 1813. Horock's loom

6780-528: The first highly mechanised factory was John Lombe 's water-powered silk mill at Derby , operational by 1721. Lombe learned silk thread manufacturing by taking a job in Italy and acting as an industrial spy; however, because the Italian silk industry guarded its secrets closely, the state of the industry at that time is unknown. Although Lombe's factory was technically successful, the supply of raw silk from Italy

6893-400: The first successful cylinder for a Boulton and Watt steam engine in 1776, he was given an exclusive contract for providing cylinders. After Watt developed a rotary steam engine in 1782, they were widely applied to blowing, hammering, rolling and slitting. The solutions to the sulfur problem were the addition of sufficient limestone to the furnace to force sulfur into the slag as well as

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7006-414: The industry's output worldwide. Chemicals are used in many different consumer goods, and are also used in many different sectors. This includes agriculture manufacturing, construction, and service industries. Major industrial customers include rubber and plastic products, textiles , apparel, petroleum refining, pulp and paper , and primary metals. Chemicals are nearly a $ 5 trillion global enterprise, and

7119-517: The iron industries during the Industrial Revolution was the replacement of wood and other bio-fuels with coal ; for a given amount of heat, mining coal required much less labour than cutting wood and converting it to charcoal , and coal was much more abundant than wood, supplies of which were becoming scarce before the enormous increase in iron production that took place in the late 18th century. In 1709, Abraham Darby made progress using coke to fuel his blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale . However,

7232-405: The large-scale manufacture of machine tools, and the use of increasingly advanced machinery in steam-powered factories. The earliest recorded use of the term "Industrial Revolution" was in July 1799 by French envoy Louis-Guillaume Otto , announcing that France had entered the race to industrialise. In his 1976 book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society , Raymond Williams states in

7345-409: The largest chemical production centres anywhere. By the 1870s, the British soda output of 200,000 tons annually exceeded that of all other nations in the world combined. These huge factories began to produce a greater diversity of chemicals as the Industrial Revolution matured. Originally, large quantities of alkaline waste were vented into the environment from the production of soda, provoking one of

7458-688: The largest of scales are made in a few manufacturing locations around the world, for example in Texas and Louisiana along the Gulf Coast of the United States , on Teesside ( United Kingdom ), and in Rotterdam in the Netherlands . The large-scale manufacturing locations often have clusters of manufacturing units that share utilities and large-scale infrastructure such as power stations , port facilities , and road and rail terminals. To demonstrate

7571-697: The largest revenue segment and includes all categories of plastics and human-made fibers. The major markets for plastics are packaging , followed by home construction, containers, appliances, pipe, transportation, toys, and games. Principal raw materials for polymers are bulk petrochemicals like ethylene, propylene and benzene. Petrochemicals and intermediate chemicals are primarily made from liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), natural gas and crude oil fractions. Large volume products include ethylene , propylene , benzene , toluene , xylenes , methanol , vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), styrene , butadiene , and ethylene oxide . These basic or commodity chemicals are

7684-450: The main producers of the chemical industry, we can also look on a more global scale at how industrialized countries rank, with regard to the billions of dollars worth of production a country or region could export. Though the business of chemistry is worldwide in scope, the bulk of the world's $ 3.7 trillion chemical output is accounted for by only a handful of industrialized nations. The United States alone produced $ 689 billion, 18.6 percent of

7797-423: The manufacture of sulfuric acid. In the early 18th century, cloth was bleached by treating it with stale urine or sour milk and exposing it to sunlight for long periods of time, which created a severe bottleneck in production. Sulfuric acid began to be used as a more efficient agent as well as lime by the middle of the century, but it was the discovery of bleaching powder by Charles Tennant that spurred

7910-467: The mass of hot wrought iron. Rolling was 15 times faster at this than a trip hammer . A different use of rolling, which was done at lower temperatures than that for expelling slag, was in the production of iron sheets, and later structural shapes such as beams, angles, and rails. The puddling process was improved in 1818 by Baldwyn Rogers, who replaced some of the sand lining on the reverberatory furnace bottom with iron oxide . In 1838 John Hall patented

8023-606: The materials used in home construction. These specialty products are marketed by chemical companies to the downstream manufacturing industries as pesticides , specialty polymers , electronic chemicals, surfactants , construction chemicals, Industrial Cleaners, flavours and fragrances , specialty coatings, printing inks, water-soluble polymers, food additives , paper chemicals , oil field chemicals, plastic adhesives, adhesives and sealants , cosmetic chemicals , water management chemicals , catalysts , and textile chemicals. Chemical companies rarely supply these products directly to

8136-401: The modern capitalist economy, while the Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in capitalist economies. Economic historians agree that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in human history since the domestication of animals and plants. The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is

8249-459: The most important effect of the Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living for the general population in the Western world began to increase consistently for the first time in history, although others have said that it did not begin to improve meaningfully until the late 19th and 20th centuries. GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of

8362-599: The number of cotton goods consumed in Western Europe was minor until the early 19th century. By 1600, Flemish refugees began weaving cotton cloth in English towns where cottage spinning and weaving of wool and linen was well established. They were left alone by the guilds who did not consider cotton a threat. Earlier European attempts at cotton spinning and weaving were in 12th-century Italy and 15th-century southern Germany, but these industries eventually ended when

8475-476: The pace of economic and social changes . According to Cambridge historian Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Britain was already industrialising in the 17th century, and "Our database shows that a groundswell of enterprise and productivity transformed the economy in the 17th century, laying the foundations for the world's first industrial economy. Britain was already a nation of makers by the year 1700" and "the history of Britain needs to be rewritten". Eric Hobsbawm held that

8588-578: The product will meet required specifications . More organizations within the industry are implementing chemical compliance software to maintain quality products and manufacturing standards. The products are packaged and delivered by many methods, including pipelines, tank-cars, and tank-trucks (for both solids and liquids), cylinders, drums, bottles, and boxes. Chemical companies often have a research-and-development laboratory for developing and testing products and processes. These facilities may include pilot plants and such research facilities may be located at

8701-531: The rest. In September 2023, a court in The Netherlands declared Chemours liable for pollution caused by the Teflon producing plant in the city of Dordrecht , South Holland. The court stated that Chemours' predecessor DuPont had willingly withheld crucial information between 1984 and 1998 about the harmful effects of the substances it used and emitted, which made the pollution unlawful. In February 2024,

8814-446: The result was an unprecedented rise in population and the rate of population growth . The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods, and textiles became the dominant industry in terms of employment, value of output, and capital invested. Many of the technological and architectural innovations were of British origin. By the mid-18th century, Britain was the world's leading commercial nation, controlling

8927-400: The revenue output) make up the oldest of the chemical categories. Products include salt , chlorine , caustic soda , soda ash , acids (such as nitric acid , phosphoric acid , and sulfuric acid ), titanium dioxide , and hydrogen peroxide . Fertilizers are the smallest category (about 6 percent) and include phosphates , ammonia , and potash chemicals. Life sciences (about 30% of

9040-607: The revolution, such as courts ruling in favour of property rights . An entrepreneurial spirit and consumer revolution helped drive industrialisation in Britain, which after 1800, was emulated in Belgium, the United States, and France. The Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in history, comparable only to humanity's adoption of agriculture with respect to material advancement. The Industrial Revolution influenced in some way almost every aspect of daily life. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. Some economists have said

9153-539: The same date. Chemours has assumed various liabilities arising from lawsuits against DuPont. Additionally, Chemours' plant in Bladen County, North Carolina , was found to be dumping vast quantities of a chemical dubbed " GenX ", a precursor of Teflon , into the Cape Fear River . This story is recounted in the 2018 documentary film The Devil We Know , which centers on Parkersburg, West Virginia, where

9266-418: The slag from almost 50% to around 8%. Puddling became widely used after 1800. Up to that time, British iron manufacturers had used considerable amounts of iron imported from Sweden and Russia to supplement domestic supplies. Because of the increased British production, imports began to decline in 1785, and by the 1790s Britain eliminated imports and became a net exporter of bar iron. Hot blast , patented by

9379-457: The smelting and refining of iron, coal and coke produced inferior iron to that made with charcoal because of the coal's sulfur content. Low sulfur coals were known, but they still contained harmful amounts. Conversion of coal to coke only slightly reduces the sulfur content. A minority of coals are coking. Another factor limiting the iron industry before the Industrial Revolution was the scarcity of water power to power blast bellows. This limitation

9492-543: The source of the potash had traditionally been wood ashes in Western Europe . By the 18th century, this source was becoming uneconomical due to deforestation, and the French Academy of Sciences offered a prize of 2400 livres for a method to produce alkali from sea salt ( sodium chloride ). The Leblanc process was patented in 1791 by Nicolas Leblanc who then built a Leblanc plant at Saint-Denis . He

9605-475: The starting materials used to manufacture many polymers and other more complex organic chemicals particularly those that are made for use in the specialty chemicals category. Other derivatives and basic industrials include synthetic rubber , surfactants , dyes and pigments , turpentine , resins , carbon black , explosives , and rubber products and contribute about 20 percent of the basic chemicals' external sales. Inorganic chemicals (about 12% of

9718-528: The supply of cotton was cut off. The Moors in Spain grew, spun, and wove cotton beginning around the 10th century. British cloth could not compete with Indian cloth because India's labour cost was approximately one-fifth to one-sixth that of Britain's. In 1700 and 1721, the British government passed Calico Acts to protect the domestic woollen and linen industries from the increasing amounts of cotton fabric imported from India. The demand for heavier fabric

9831-619: The total world chemical output in 2008. Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution , sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution , was a period of global transition of the human economy towards more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes that succeeded the Agricultural Revolution . Beginning in Great Britain ,

9944-458: The use of catalysts . The products of these reactions are separated using a variety of techniques including distillation especially fractional distillation , precipitation , crystallization , adsorption , filtration , sublimation , and drying . The processes and products or products are usually tested during and after manufacture by dedicated instruments and on-site quality control laboratories to ensure safe operation and to assure that

10057-415: The use of low sulfur coal. The use of lime or limestone required higher furnace temperatures to form a free-flowing slag. The increased furnace temperature made possible by improved blowing also increased the capacity of blast furnaces and allowed for increased furnace height. In addition to lower cost and greater availability, coke had other important advantages over charcoal in that it was harder and made

10170-406: The use of roasted tap cinder ( iron silicate ) for the furnace bottom, greatly reducing the loss of iron through increased slag caused by a sand lined bottom. The tap cinder also tied up some phosphorus, but this was not understood at the time. Hall's process also used iron scale or rust which reacted with carbon in the molten iron. Hall's process, called wet puddling , reduced losses of iron with

10283-410: The water frame used a series of four pairs of rollers, each operating at a successively higher rotating speed, to draw out the fibre which was then twisted by the spindle. The roller spacing was slightly longer than the fibre length. Too close a spacing caused the fibres to break while too distant a spacing caused uneven thread. The top rollers were leather-covered and loading on the rollers was applied by

10396-430: The world's exports and 37% of the world's imports, although the latest data shows that Asia is catching up with 34% of the exports and 37% of imports. Even so, Europe still has a trading surplus with all regions of the world except Japan and China where in 2011 there was a chemical trade balance. Europe's trade surplus with the rest of the world today amounts to 41.7 billion Euros. Over the 20 years between 1991 and 2011,

10509-428: The world's supply of dyestuffs and sold approximately 80% of their production abroad. In the United States, Herbert Henry Dow's use of electrochemistry to produce chemicals from brine was a commercial success that helped to promote the country's chemical industry. The petrochemical industry can be traced back to the oil works of Scottish chemist James Young , and Canadian Abraham Pineo Gesner . The first plastic

10622-490: Was sulfuric acid . In 1736 pharmacist Joshua Ward developed a process for its production that involved heating sulfur with saltpeter, allowing the sulfur to oxidize and combine with water. It was the first practical production of sulphuric acid on a large scale. John Roebuck and Samuel Garbett were the first to establish a large-scale factory in Prestonpans, Scotland , in 1749, which used leaden condensing chambers for

10735-505: Was 7,800 tons and coke cast iron was 250,000 tons. In 1750, the UK imported 31,200 tons of bar iron and either refined from cast iron or directly produced 18,800 tons of bar iron using charcoal and 100 tons using coke. In 1796, the UK was making 125,000 tons of bar iron with coke and 6,400 tons with charcoal; imports were 38,000 tons and exports were 24,600 tons. In 1806 the UK did not import bar iron but exported 31,500 tons. A major change in

10848-407: Was a means of decarburizing molten pig iron by slow oxidation in a reverberatory furnace by manually stirring it with a long rod. The decarburized iron, having a higher melting point than cast iron, was raked into globs by the puddler. When the glob was large enough, the puddler would remove it. Puddling was backbreaking and extremely hot work. Few puddlers lived to be 40. Because puddling was done in

10961-606: Was available (and not far from Coalbrookdale). These furnaces were equipped with water-powered bellows, the water being pumped by Newcomen steam engines . The Newcomen engines were not attached directly to the blowing cylinders because the engines alone could not produce a steady air blast. Abraham Darby III installed similar steam-pumped, water-powered blowing cylinders at the Dale Company when he took control in 1768. The Dale Company used several Newcomen engines to drain its mines and made parts for engines which it sold throughout

11074-414: Was converted to wrought iron. Conversion of cast iron had long been done in a finery forge . An improved refining process known as potting and stamping was developed, but this was superseded by Henry Cort 's puddling process. Cort developed two significant iron manufacturing processes: rolling in 1783 and puddling in 1784. Puddling produced a structural grade iron at a relatively low cost. Puddling

11187-506: Was cut off to eliminate competition. In order to promote manufacturing, the Crown paid for models of Lombe's machinery which were exhibited in the Tower of London . Parts of India, China, Central America, South America, and the Middle East have a long history of hand manufacturing cotton textiles, which became a major industry sometime after 1000 AD. In tropical and subtropical regions where it

11300-740: Was denied his prize money because of the French Revolution . In Britain, the Leblanc process became popular. William Losh built the first soda works in Britain at the Losh, Wilson and Bell works on the River Tyne in 1816, but it remained on a small scale due to large tariffs on salt production until 1824. When these tariffs were repealed, the British soda industry was able to rapidly expand. James Muspratt 's chemical works in Liverpool and Charles Tennant's complex near Glasgow became

11413-403: Was designed by John Smeaton . Cast iron cylinders for use with a piston were difficult to manufacture; the cylinders had to be free of holes and had to be machined smooth and straight to remove any warping. James Watt had great difficulty trying to have a cylinder made for his first steam engine. In 1774 Wilkinson invented a precision boring machine for boring cylinders. After Wilkinson bored

11526-544: Was followed by a period of colonialism beginning around the 16th century. Following the discovery of a trade route to India around southern Africa by the Portuguese, the British founded the East India Company , along with smaller companies of different nationalities which established trading posts and employed agents to engage in trade throughout the Indian Ocean region. One of the largest segments of this trade

11639-569: Was grown, most was grown by small farmers alongside their food crops and was spun and woven in households, largely for domestic consumption. In the 15th century, China began to require households to pay part of their taxes in cotton cloth. By the 17th century, almost all Chinese wore cotton clothing. Almost everywhere cotton cloth could be used as a medium of exchange . In India, a significant amount of cotton textiles were manufactured for distant markets, often produced by professional weavers. Some merchants also owned small weaving workshops. India produced

11752-479: Was improved by Richard Roberts in 1822, and these were produced in large numbers by Roberts, Hill & Co. Roberts was additionally a maker of high-quality machine tools and a pioneer in the use of jigs and gauges for precision workshop measurement. The demand for cotton presented an opportunity to planters in the Southern United States, who thought upland cotton would be a profitable crop if

11865-660: Was in cotton textiles, which were purchased in India and sold in Southeast Asia , including the Indonesian archipelago where spices were purchased for sale to Southeast Asia and Europe. By the mid-1760s, cloth was over three-quarters of the East India Company's exports. Indian textiles were in demand in the North Atlantic region of Europe where previously only wool and linen were available; however,

11978-491: Was instrumental in making the Solvay process a commercial success. He made several refinements between 1873 and 1880 that removed byproducts that could inhibit the production of sodium carbonate in the process. The manufacture of chemical products from fossil fuels began at scale in the early 19th century. The coal tar and ammoniacal liquor residues of coal gas manufacture for gas lighting began to be processed in 1822 at

12091-516: Was invented by Alexander Parkes , an English metallurgist . In 1856, he patented Parkesine , a celluloid based on nitrocellulose treated with a variety of solvents. This material, exhibited at the 1862 London International Exhibition, anticipated many of the modern aesthetic and utility uses of plastics. The industrial production of soap from vegetable oils was started by William Lever and his brother James in 1885 in Lancashire based on

12204-400: Was later used in the first cotton spinning mill . In 1764, in the village of Stanhill, Lancashire, James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny , which he patented in 1770. It was the first practical spinning frame with multiple spindles. The jenny worked in a similar manner to the spinning wheel, by first clamping down on the fibres, then by drawing them out, followed by twisting. It was

12317-437: Was made by the bloomery process, which was the predominant iron smelting process until the late 18th century. In the UK in 1720, there were 20,500 tons of cast iron produced with charcoal and 400 tons with coke. In 1750 charcoal iron production was 24,500 and coke iron was 2,500 tons. In 1788, the production of charcoal cast iron was 14,000 tons while coke iron production was 54,000 tons. In 1806, charcoal cast iron production

12430-419: Was met by a domestic industry based around Lancashire that produced fustian , a cloth with flax warp and cotton weft . Flax was used for the warp because wheel-spun cotton did not have sufficient strength, but the resulting blend was not as soft as 100% cotton and was more difficult to sew. On the eve of the Industrial Revolution, spinning and weaving were done in households, for domestic consumption, and as

12543-413: Was overcome by the steam engine. Use of coal in iron smelting started somewhat before the Industrial Revolution, based on innovations by Clement Clerke and others from 1678, using coal reverberatory furnaces known as cupolas. These were operated by the flames playing on the ore and charcoal or coke mixture, reducing the oxide to metal. This has the advantage that impurities (such as sulphur ash) in

12656-425: Was produced on machinery invented in Britain. In 1788, there were 50,000 spindles in Britain, rising to 7 million over the next 30 years. The earliest European attempts at mechanised spinning were with wool; however, wool spinning proved more difficult to mechanise than cotton. Productivity improvement in wool spinning during the Industrial Revolution was significant but far less than that of cotton. Arguably

12769-628: Was spun and woven by the cottage industry in Lancashire . The work was done by hand in workers' homes or occasionally in master weavers' shops. Wages in Lancashire were about six times those in India in 1770 when overall productivity in Britain was about three times higher than in India. In 1787, raw cotton consumption was 22 million pounds, most of which was cleaned, carded, and spun on machines. The British textile industry used 52 million pounds of cotton in 1800, which increased to 588 million pounds in 1850. The share of value added by

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