Sources: “Chemical Industry”. The New Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15. 1984. Print. “Materials Processing”. The New Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15. 1984. Print.

The chemical industry is a domain that encompasses a wide array of goods. Defining it as the business of using chemistry and manufacturing chemical materials is not appropriate because the term “chemical” can be universally applied to a broad spectrum of items.

The distinct categories in this industry are generally shaped by its history more than by logic. For example, the petroleum industry was thought of as a different body from the chemical industry because at the outset of the 19th century, crude oil simply went through a distillation treatment. Today, however, a modern refinery incorporates many more processes and materials and the term petrochemical is more often used to describe this industry category, but since both the primary distillation and the added modern processes are carried out in the same complex, it is difficult to separate the petroleum industry from the chemical industry in this one environment.

As one can see, the rationale to partition and categorize the chemical industry can be somewhat confusing. The basic raw materials that are used to initiate chemical productions are coal, natural gas, petroleum, air, water, salt, and a few other specialized products. These are then converted into primary, secondary and tertiary products, depending on what part of the production process they are used, and the degree of separation that there is from that process to the end consumer. Primary products are the starting point, the ones most removed from consumers. They are followed by secondary and then tertiary products, but this does not mean that chemicals only get processed at 3 different factories. The typical chemical product has to go through several factories before it reaches the market.

Furthermore, the chemical industry can also be classified between heavy inorganic chemicals, heavy organic chemicals, fine chemicals and light chemicals, which themselves have unclear boundaries as well.

Some general differences that can distinguish these classifications are heavy inorganic chemicals comprise materials that are produced in copious amounts, in large, exterior factories with equipment of substantial size and very few moving parts and personnel. By contrast, the light chemical industry has moderately sized equipment, housed in the interiors of buildings, with several personnel necessary to conduct the operations. Fine chemical industry mostly covers dyes and pharmaceauticals. But once again, there is no distinct and precise method for categorizing and separating each group.