Chapter 9
I Introduction
II The Australian Chemical Industry
III Pharmaceuticals
IV Chemists In Other Industries
V The Dawn Of Modern Chemical Industry - High Pressure Synthesis
VI The Growth Of Synthetic Chemicals - Concentration, Rationalisation And International Links
VII Australian Industrial Chemical Research Laboratories
i Australian instrument inventions
ii Plant protection - overseas and in Australia
iii Successes in the laboratory but . . .
iv Drugs for sheep and cattle revisited Tetramisole - international success and local manufacture
v 'Promicide'* 'Grenade'* to control ticks
vi Technical service R&D
vii Industry/CSIRO/university collaboration
viii Australian entrepreneurs in modern chemistry
VIII The Plastics Industry
IX The Paint Industry
X Acknowledgements
References
Index
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The period of the fifties to seventies was one of professionalism in industrial expansion and of great technological optimism. World-wide, new chemical processes and products emerged at an unprecedented scale. Many of I. G. Farben's embryonic advances, such as the polyurethanes, the OXO alcohol process, hydrogenation of coal, ethyl methacrylate, Reppe (acetylene) chemistry and surfactants became accessible to the West through the FIAT reports and were rapidly industrialised. New monomers (building blocks for plastics), nylon, polyester, polyethelene, polystyrene, polypropylene, polybutadiene, polyacrylonitrile, new biocides, drugs, surface-active agents and new processes for all these products emerged every month from the world's patent specifications. Australian industrial planners and researchers were ambitious to grasp their share of this harvest.
ICI Australia's young researchers, in the optimistic spirit of the time, took on some major tasks and had a series of surprisingly early successes -and some failures. Both were characteristic of the time and the role of the chemical industry in Australia's development.
Organisations in Australian Science at Work - I.C.I. Australia Ltd. Central Research Laboratories
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Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering |  |
© 1988 Print Edition page 679, Online Edition 2000
Published by Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, using the Web Academic Resource Publisher
http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/647.html