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Chemical raw materials are divided into three categories: raw compounds obtained from nature, industrial minerals, and inorganic compounds. Cellulose and lignin are commonly harvested from nature and used in various products. Popular industrial raw materials include quartz, petroleum, and minerals containing metals. Industrial chemicals are the most refined and include compounds such as ethylene and ammonia. Other necessary chemicals include sulfuric acid, chlorine, nitrogen, and oxygen.
Chemical raw materials can be divided into one of three broad categories used by a wide variety of industries around the world. The most basic of the types of raw materials available are raw compounds obtained in impure form from nature, which include short-term biological products such as timber from the forest industry, mineral deposits and petroleum. An immediate by-product of refining some of these materials yields another vast array of chemical feedstocks known as industrial minerals. This includes compounds such as clay, quartz and bauxite ore, where the chemicals in this stage of refinement are usually 85% to 98% pure. The next widely used group of chemical raw materials covers inorganic compounds with a purity of 98% to 99.9%, with examples of purified metal oxides such as iron oxide and synthetic chemicals such as sodium hydroxide, NaOH, used as catalysts and reagents for the process industry.
The most commonly available and harvested chemical feedstock that is regularly replenished from nature is cellulose, followed closely by lignin. Both compounds together make up most of the cellular structure in the cell walls of plants and the woody parts of trees. In addition to using cellulose and lignin to produce raw materials such as timber for buildings or to make paper, the compounds are also vital for the production of biofuels, as a binder in glues and many other products. As the precursor chemical feedstock to many of these commercial products, cellulose and lignin are made into paper or pulp and as of the year 2000, over 334,000,000 tons of pulp were estimated to be produced globally each year . The largest amount of this at 131,000,000 tons is generated from trees, but other sources include recycled paper and crop waste from various types of fibrous plants.
Popular industrial raw materials include quartz, which can exist as gem-quality minerals such as jasper and onyx, or common sand used to make glass and silicon microprocessors. Petroleum is another industrial raw material that is refined into a wide variety of purified hydrocarbons and hundreds of different types of plastics. Among the mineral-based industrial raw materials in great demand by industry are those that contain metals such as lead, iron and copper. Other chemical raw materials that are very important to the industry include limestone which is used to make cement and concrete and kaolin, an aluminosilicate mineral used to make everything from fiberglass to ceramics and paints.
Industrial chemicals are the most refined chemical raw materials, being almost entirely composed of the active compound. These range across a broad spectrum from ethylene used for the production of plastics, to ammonia used as a fertilizer and solvent. Sulfuric acid, soda ash and chemical elements such as chlorine are also necessary chemical raw materials for many manufacturing processes. Other chemicals essential to 21st century industry include nitrogen and oxygen, which are used to control other chemical reactions or speed them up through oxidation.
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