Inorganic chemistry
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Inorganic chemicals is the shortened form of inorganic chemical industry and is an important branch of the chemical industry with natural resources and industrial by-products as raw materials for the production of sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, phosphoric acid, soda ash, caustic soda, synthetic ammonia, fertilizer and inorganic salts, etc. This includes sulfuric acid industry, soda industry, the chloro-alkali industry, synthetic ammonia industry, fertilizer industry and mineral industry. Its broad definition also includes the production of inorganic non-metallic materials and fine inorganic product such as ceramics and inorganic pigment. The main raw material of inorganic chemical products are mineral product including sulfur, sodium, phosphorus, potassium and calcium and coal, oil, gas, and air, water and so on.
Inorganic chemicals can be traced back to the ancient process of ceramics, alchemy, brewing, dyeing at thousands of years ago. Although with small scale, backward technology and pure manual manipulation, but it is the prototype of inorganic chemicals. For thousands of years, due to the low productivity, it gets slow development. Until the 18th century, it had developed rapidly. In the middle of 18th century, Britain had first applied lead chamber method using saltpeter and sulfur as raw materials to produce sulfuric acid. In 1783, Lu Bulan (France) proposed the soda method using sodium chloride, sulfuric acid, coal as raw materials. In the latter half of the 18th century, the modern chemical industry taking inorganic chemical industry as the main content had began to emerge. In 1841, people began the production of phosphate fertilizer; In 1965 Belgian Solvay realized the industrialization of ammonia soda for production of soda; with the rise of preparing potassium industry in 1870; In 1890, people began to use electrolytic approach for making Cl2 and caustic soda;
In 1913, people had achieved the catalytic synthesis