ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES FACING THE CHEMICAL-INDUSTRY

Catalysis and process research have a tremendous opportunity to improv e our environment. New catalytic processes can clean up the contaminat ed soil and water in existing plants, manufacture chemicals with minim al exposure to hazardous materials, and essentially eliminate waste. T his paper will briefly discuss six areas, currently under exploration at DuPont which illustrate this potential. These include: 1) better ca talytic processes which generate less waste because of higher yield; 2 ) conversion of waste byproducts to salable coproducts; 3) new process es for the production and consumption of hazardous materials; 4) a pot ential route for the oxidative desulfurization of petroleum fuels; 5) the development of environmentally safer products for replacing chloro fluorocarbons; 6) a potential biochemical process for the remediation of ground water contaminated with chlorocarbons.