《化学工程与工艺专业英语》课文翻译(2)

Since 1940 the chemical industry has grown at a remarkable rate, although this has slowed significantly in recent years. The lion‘s share of this growth has been in the organic chemicals sector due to the development and growth of the petrochemicals area since 1950s. The explosives growth in petrochemicals in the 1960s and 1970s was largely due to the enormous increase in demand for synthetic polymers such as polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon, polyesters and epoxy resins.

1940年以来，化学工业一直以引人注目的速度飞速发展。尽管这种发展的速度近年来已大大减慢。化学工业的发展由于1950年以来石油化学领域的研究和开发大部分在有机化学方面取得。石油化工在60年代和70年代的迅猛发展主要是由于人们对于合成高聚物如聚乙烯、聚丙烯、尼龙、聚脂和环氧树脂的需求巨大增加。

The chemical industry today is a very diverse sector of manufacturing industry, within which it plays a central role. It makes thousands of different chemicals which the general public only usually encounter as end or consumer products. These products are purchased because they have the required properties which make them suitable for some particular application, e.g. a non-stick coating for pans or a weedkiller. Thus chemicals are ultimately sold for the effects that they produce.

今天的化学工业已经是制造业中有着许多分支的部门，并且在制造业中起着核心的作用。它生产了数千种不同的化学产品，而人们通常只接触到终端产品或消费品。这些产品被购买是因为他们具有某些性质适合（人们）的一些特别的用途，例如，用于盆的不粘涂层或一种杀虫剂。这些化学产品归根到底是由于它们能产生的作用而被购买的。

2. Definition of the Chemical Industry

At the turn of the century there would have been little difficulty in defining what constituted the chemical industry since only a very limited range of products was manufactured and these were clearly chemicals, e.g., alkali, sulphuric acid. At present, however, many intermediates to products produced, from raw materials like crude oil through (in some cases) many intermediates to products which may be used directly as consumer goods, or readily converted into them. The difficulty cones in deciding at which point in this sequence the particular operation ceases to be part of the chemical industry‘s sphere of activities. To consider a specific example to illustrate this dilemma, emulsion paints may contain poly (vinyl chloride) / poly (vinyl acetate). Clearly, synthesis of vinyl chloride (or acetate) and its polymerization are chemical activities. However, if formulation and mixing of the paint, including the polymer, is carried out by a branch of the multinational chemical company which manufactured the ingredients, is this still part of the chemical industry of does it mow belong in the decorating industry?

2．化学工业的定义

在本世纪初，要定义什么是化学工业是不太困难的，因为那时所生产的化学品是很有限的，而且是非常清楚的化学品，例如，烧碱，硫酸。然而现在有数千种化学产品被生产，从一些原料物质像用于制备许多的半成品的石油，到可以直接作为消费品或很容易转化为消费品的商品。困难在于如何决定在一些特殊的生产过程中哪一个环节不再属于化学工业的活动范畴。举一个特殊的例子来描述一下这种困境。乳剂漆含有聚氯乙烯/聚醋酸乙烯。显然，氯乙烯（或醋酸乙烯）的合成以及聚合是化学活动。然而，如果这种漆，包括高聚物，它的配制和混合是由一家制造配料的跨国化学公司完成的话，那它仍然是属于化学工业呢还是应当归属于装饰工业中去呢？