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From chewing gum to training shoes, and lipstick to
throwaway bags, oil is everywhere in our daily life (although, fortunately, not in original sticky and nauseating form). They result from the miraculous transformation achieved by the alchemists of modern times: the petroleum chemists. |
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| CD-ROM case in polyethylene. |
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Petroleum chemistry and plastic products in particular are sometimes criticised, but without the colours (pigments and paints), which enliven our favourite objects like our CDs and DVDs, our snowboarding anorak … we would live almost in black and white! Indeed, the products [link to focus: The products derived from oil] resulting from the chemistry of oil (petroleum chemistry) are numerous and varied. They contribute to our comfort, our pleasure and our safety. |
| For all those who were born after 1960, these products are so much part of everyday life that one cannot imagine being without them. Nevertheless, their appearance in our daily life is really very recent. Old people will be able to tell you: they were young children and adolescents without knowing polyester sportswear, Nike, Adidas and Reebok training shoes, plastic bags which are so practical, and even the outer casings of mobiles, scooters, televisions and computers. Incredible? The facts are there: in 1950, the consumer products resulting from petroleum chemistry attained only 3 million tons worldwide, of which half were plastic products. In the year 2000, 192 million tons were produced of which 140 million tons were plastics.
In 2005, world production of plastics reached a level of 235 million tonnes, and the outlook is for 300 million tonnes by 2010. |
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| Example of derived products from the petrochemical industry: soles of sports shoes. |
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| Factory in Balan (France) that manufactures large plastic items for our daily life. |
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Why did these products arrive so late on the market when the era of the massive use of oil started
at the beginning of the 20 th century? Around the 1930’s, the petrol, diesel and kerosene produced in enormous quantities by refineries had guaranteed outlets: all types of vehicles. But the refiners found themselves with unimaginable quantities of a product, naphtha (also called heavy petrol), which was unsaleable and unstockable because it was inflammable and polluting. Naphtha is the distillation cut which comes after kerosene and before petrol. Researchers thought about this apparently insurmountable problem and found the solution. Thanks to the astonishing chemical versatility of the polymerisation reaction, naphtha is today the origin of the majority of products derived from oil.
How do we get from this liquid to all the “plastics” that we call polymers, synthetic fibres, detergents, etc.? We use petrochemical techniques the principle of which is called steam cracking. |
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