ECI online:  its genesis

This website is aimed at teachers and students at all levels of education from secondary school to postgraduate courses.  It is also used by researchers and by practising industrialists. 

This website was originally developed from a book, The Essential Chemical Industry, produced by CIEC, Centre for Industry Education Collaboration, a group devoted to explaining the chemical industry in an unbiased way and based in the Department of Chemistry, University of York, a leading teaching and research department in the UK.

In the 1970s, some school and university chemistry courses began to introduce industrial topics and the 1980s saw a growing demand for these courses to include a greater understanding of industrial and technological processes.  However, examiners, teachers and their students struggled to find this information and it was often unreliable and out of date.

The Essential Chemical Industry, first published in 1985, was a targeted response to this problem, giving easy access to modern unbiased information that was thoroughly researched and checked by industrial chemists and engineers.
The website is used by many different groups and is kept up-to-date with frequent revisions.

John Lazonby
David Waddington

York, 2017