The commodity chemistry everything else is built from
Methanol carbonylation, benzene alkylation, cumene peroxidation, ammonia oxidation and catalytic SO₂ conversion — equilibrium found by free-energy minimization where it belongs, and kinetic selectivity respected where equilibrium would give the wrong answer entirely.
Process modules
Methanol carbonylated with CO over the iridium Cativa catalyst — a reaction with 100% atom economy — then purified.
Open process page →Benzene alkylated with propylene, with excess benzene suppressing the second alkylation and returned at recycle purity.
Open process page →The route behind ~95% of the world's phenol: cumene peroxidized then acid-cleaved, co-producing acetone mole-for-mole.
Open process page →Three stages in three genuinely different regimes — a kinetically selective Pt-Rh burner, a gas-phase oxidation and absorption.
Open process page →SO₂ oxidized over vanadium pentoxide, solved by Gibbs free-energy minimization rather than an assumed conversion.
Open process page →These five are deliberately different in kind. Sulfuric acid is solved by Gibbs free-energy minimization, so its conversion comes from thermodynamics rather than a typed-in number. Nitric acid's ammonia burner is the opposite case: equilibrium favours nitrogen, and the platinum gauze exists to win a kinetic race — modelling that stage as an equilibrium reactor would predict the wrong product. Where a homogeneous catalyst is not a flowing component, the page says so.