What We Can Obtain from Analytical Chemistry for Technological and Industrial Purposes?

Abstract

Chemical analysis—the practical branch of analytical chemistry—can be applied in three different or complementary situations: characterization, identification, and determination of organic and inorganic analytes. These sets of information are involved in the economic and social aspects of relevant industrial and technological activities in the modern society e.g., agriculture, biotechnology, chemicals, oil and gas, materials, and pharmaceuticals. We can observe a considerable variation related to the families of analytical techniques available for each economic sector, which comes from the complexity of the analytical parameters involved, as concentration of a certain compound and their physicochemical properties; for instance, in the case of chemicals and pharmaceuticals they require both qualitative (e.g., structural resolution obtained by spectroscopic techniques) and quantitative information (e.g., concentration of products and by-products by means of chromatographic techniques)—this approach can be applied to all economic sectors considered here. Finally, the description of classical and instrumental techniques and examples ensure what can be obtained by industry from analytical chemistry.