A different chemical industry

The changing trends of the current chemical industry in relation to the past quarter century scenario of the industry are discussed. In the current altered chemical industry, the engineering laboratories are going to produce products such as the familiar commodities, molecules with molecular weight of 500-700, and nanostructured products for which the value is added by processing to make a specific nanostructure. For commodity products, the key factor is the cost of the product, and the basis for producing such product will continue to be unit operations. The major cost of molecular products is the cost of their discovery. For nanostructured products, whose key factor comes from their superior function, the added value comes from the process rather than from the chemical synthesis.