About us

We are a group of students of age 16 who have researched on Jurong Island, as well as, 2 useful chemicals (Cellulose acetate and polyvinylchloride) which have widespread applications in our daily life.

The purpose of putting up our research on the internet is to increase the awareness of students (of age 10-16) about the Chemistry of Jurong Island. We hope that you will learn more the Chemistry of Jurong Island after browsing through this website and have greater interest in it.

Our research on Jurong Island is available under the "Contents" section at the sidebar (left). You may visit the website on the 2 chemicals for information regarding it. Or you may go to our Mainpage. The links to these websites are under the "Links" section.

For more information regarding Jurong Island, you may visit the sources of our research, under the "Credits" section. Enjoy! (:

About Jurong Island

Jurong Island
-located to the southwest of the main island of Singapore, off JurongIndustrial Estate
-formed from the amalgamation of several offshore islands, chiefly the seven main islands of Pulau Ayer Chawan, Pulau Ayer Merbau, Pulau Merlimau, Pulau Pesek, Pulau Pesek Kecil, Pulau Sakra and Pulau Seraya. (by land reclamation)
-linked to the main island by a 2.3 km causeway known as the Jurong Island Highway, opened in March 1999.

sources:

-http://www.exxonmobilchemical.com
-www.wikipedia.org

History behind Jurong Island's birth

History behind its birth:

• The outlying islands of Pulau Ayer Chawan, Pulau Ayer Merbau, Pulau Merlimau and Pulau Seraya used to house fishing communities comprising small villages up to the 1960s.
  



• Between late-1960s and early-1970s, three big oil companies planned to house their facilities on Pulau Ayer Chawan for Esso, Pulau Merlimau for Singapore Refinery Company and Pulau Pesek for Mobil Oil.




• The Government of Singapore then took the opportunity to grow the petrochemical industry as a choice that will significantly produce economic growth. This was proven by the success of starting off the petroleum industries in the 1970s.




• By the 1980s, after a decade of rapid industrialization, industrial land was growing scarce on Singapore mainland. The idea of joining the southern islands off Jurong to form one colossal island to create more industrial land was therefore conceived.




• In 1991, JTC Corporation (formerly Jurong Town Corporation) was appointed the agent of the Jurong Island project. JTC planned and coordinated with various government agencies in providing the necessary infrastructure and services to the island.




• Physical land reclamation began in 1995, and Jurong Island was officially opened in October 2000.
  

*dark green section is the original land

source:http://www.cpec.nus.edu.sg/myweb/newsletter/news3/jurong.html

Economic and social reasons for its creation

Economic reasons for its creation:

• When the chemical industry was identified in 1980 as an industry cluster capable of contributing significantly to the economic growth of Singapore, amalgamation (the process of merging)of the islands in forming Jurong Island, became the natural choice for the development of a petrochemical complex.



• The petroleum, petrochemical and chemical industries are experiencing rapid growth in Asia. Singapore aims to create a competitive environment on Jurong Island to house these industries



• Singapore is well positioned to play a key role in the growth of Asia-Pacific's petrochemical industry with an integrated hub on Jurong Island. Many multinational companies are already enjoying the benefits of locating on Jurong Island. Companies that have recently announced their intention to locate on Jurong Island include a Sumitomo led consortium (acrylics complex), Eastman Chemical (oxo-alcohols), Chevron (lube additives), Asahi (polyacetal resins), Poval Asia (polyvinyl alcohol), Denka (acetylene black, polystyrene) and Lonza (purified isophthalic acid).

Social reasons for its creation:

• Jurong Island was created to provide greater convenience and value for the chemical industry. Facilities like Banyan LogisPark and the new Meranti LogisPark aim to provide logistic support for island companies which require berths, jetties and other marine facilities. These Storage and Terminal companies will be linked to petrochemical plants on other parts of the island by a pipeline corridor, providing integral support to oil & chemical related activities on the island and in the Southeast Asian region. The establishment of Banyan LogisPark & Meranti LogisPark looks set to enhance Singapore’s position as a premier regional logistics hub for petroleum and petrochemical products.



• With chemical logistics service providers gathering on Jurong Island, companies can outsource a range of logistics facilities and services like storage tanks, chemical warehouses, waste cleaning, maintenance and drumming services to these third-party service providers and enjoy greater cost savings, thereby increasing their competitive edge.



• The planning of the Jurong Island began with the idea of synergy (combined action or functioning), where individual islands could be combined into one main landmass for the purpose of building a petrochemical hub.

Jurong Island, a symbol of National Enterprise

The vision of wanting to turn Jurong Island into a symbol of National Enterprise:

Vision 2010: to develop Jurong Island into a World Class Chemical Hub to accommodate 5 crackers (a chemical reactor used for cracking-the process of breaking down certain hydrocarbons into simpler ones in order to give a greater yield of low-boiling products than could be obtained by simple distillation) and 150 companies with a total estimated fixed asset investment of S$40 billion by 2010. JTC (Jurong Town Corporation) and EDB (Economic Development Board) aim to achieve feedstock sufficiency for Jurong Island with 3 million tonnes of ethylene ( the basic petrochemical feedstock ) by 2010 as compared to existing capacity of 1.8 million tonnes.

Reflections-how this is related to knowledge and skills acquired from various subjects

We can connect with the concept of a growing chemical industry and that it is central to the world's economy. The chemical industry has become so vital in our daily life because of its widespread applicatons-it converts raw materials into more than 70,000 products. Chemicals are used to make a variety of consumer goods.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_industry)

Such widespread applications of the chemical industry leads to greater efficiency and lower economic costs of production of the various consumer goods. As researchers delve into creating products whose properties are more specific to the different functions, these products become more specialised. For example in reverse osmosis, it is found that the earliest membranes, made from either polyamide fibers or cellulose acetate sheets, were fragile and had short life spans, often no longer than three years. Thus, researchers are sourcing out other possibilities for the thin membranes-a sign of the search for more specialised products to be used as the thin membranes. (Source: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00046D87-0EF4-1C71-84A9809EC588EF21&pageNumber=1&catID=2)

As future products will have more specialised functions/properties and be more selective to their usages. Thus, this increases the efficiency of the system as products are more specialised to their functions. This idea of increased efficiency runs parallel to the division of labour of cells in a complex living organism in Biology.

Physics and Mathematics are also very related to the Chemistry of Jurong Island. For example, in stoichemistry (the calculation of quantitative relationships of the reactants and products in chemical reactions) and thermodynamics (a study on the effects of changes in temperature, pressure, and volume on physical systems at the macroscopic scale by analyzing the collective motion of their particles using statistics). Stiochemistry and thermodynamics are especially important in ensuring efficiency and high productivty in the production of useful chemicals.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org)