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The chlor-alkali industry is broken down into three distinct business types. Each has its own set of data, including incident reports and market tracking. Producers are facilities that produce, ship, sell, or use chlorine internally when creating other products. Sodium hypochlorite manufacturers produce sodium hypochlorite by using chlorine that was produced outside of the facility. Packagers receive chlorine in bulk. Their task is to package the product into smaller containers for sale.

It’s not an overstatement to say that 2020 has been a year like no other. The Covid-19 pandemic brought challenges like we’ve never seen before and could not have imagined. The pandemic disrupted our businesses, our schools, and affected nearly every aspect of our lives.

Performance plastics are made from petrochemicals, which is a broad term for chemicals made from petroleum, fossil fuels, or sometimes renewable sources like corn or sugarcane. PVC plastic—or polyvinyl, number four on our list of chlor-alkali chemicals—is a petrochemical performance plastic.

The chlor-alkali industry is responsible for producing five major chemicals: Chlorine Sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide Sodium hypochlorite Vinyl chloride monomer Hydrogen chloride Each of these products is included in the chloralkali market, with all five chemicals used in various applications across the country.

Americans are consuming less and less dairy, swapping in sodas, juices, and milk substitutes for the traditional cream the milkman used to deliver every morning, and it’s having an effect on the dairy industry. Borden Dairy, a milk-producing giant filed for bankruptcy in January of 2020 and is currently undergoing reorganization, only a few months after Dean Foods declared bankruptcy in 2019.

The year: 1869. The place: Promontory Summit, an elevated area in the great territory of Utah, which wouldn’t become a state for another 27 years. The event? Track-laying crews from Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads hammering in the last iron spike, marking the official completion of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad. Just like that, travelers could cross from one ocean to the other in just seven days—a voyage that previously took four months.

There are over 1,500 National Days, National Weeks and National Months according to the National Day calendar...National Pizza Day (February 9th), National Oatmeal Nut Waffle Day (March 11th), and National Cheeseburger Day (September 18th) just to name a few. We also annually celebrate National Manufacturing Day observed on October 2nd this year. This may sound like any other commemorative day but there is much more to Manufacturing Day than most people think. There are over 12 million people employed in manufacturing roles throughout the U.S. This day celebrates how these jobs keep...

Here’s a number that might surprise you: it takes roughly 260 gallons of water to produce one ton of coal. That same amount of water is enough to run a dishwasher 86 times, flush a toilet 175 times, or meet one person’s recommended daily fluid intake for almost an entire year. So, what’s all that water being used for in the mines? Almost every step of the process—from managing dust to transporting coal—relies on water in some form or another.    Photo courtesy of iStock/SergeyZavalnyukHydromonitor at a mining site. 

For the average Joe, the word “mining” might spark an image of old-timey workers, covered in soot and dirt, picks slung over their shoulders and helmets on their heads. Others might recall the legendary gold-rush stories of our school days, picturing the determined men and women who sought a bonanza in the streams of California. Neither idea is particularly accurate when it comes to today’s miners.

Despite the fact that we depend on gasoline to get us from point A to point B, few of us could say how that liquid gets from the ground to our gas tanks. We buy milk from the store; we get fuel from a gas station: simple! But the milk wasn’t made in the store, nor the gas at your local ExxonMobil, so how did it get there? Let’s start with the basics—of gasoline that is, not milk.

Once upon a time, American families would wake up in the morning to fresh milk waiting on their front stoop. Dedicated milkmen delivered that delicious liquid to growing boys and girls everywhere, making it no longer necessary to keep a cow in the backyard. Today, milk delivery has all but disappeared, with a meager 0.4 percent of consumers still paying for this service. But never fear: the milkmen of yesteryear are still hard at work hauling milk, just in a different capacity.

We all have a vague sense of oil: it comes from the ground, is changed into a useful fuel source or petrochemical, and eventually benefits our lives. Oil headlines regularly splash across the news, and we notice when gas prices fluctuate.  But what does the average American actually know about the refining process itself? In truth, we probably know more about cooking oils than we do about crude ones.