Chemical Engineering

Current Chemical Prices

Current prices for bulk industrial chemicals are often reported in trade journals such as Chemical Week and ICIS Chemical Business (formerly Chemical Market Reporter). Search the journals by limiting to the publication name and then adding the keywords. Search for the name of the chemical or the chemical abbreviation and keyword terms such as "price" and "production."

Try these business databases to search the trade journals:

Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Content Type: Business journal articles, company reports. Description: Peer-reviewed journals, trade journals, and business magazines. Company SWOT reports. Includes the Harvard Business Review, Volume 1 (1922) to present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
ABI/INFORM Complete This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Content type: Business journal articles. Description: ABI/INFORM is the library's largest online full-text business journal collection. 3,000 business periodicals - peer-reviewed journals, trade journals, business magazines, 1960 - present, including the Wall Street Journal, 1984 - present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Try these links for current chemical prices from suppliers.

BuyersGuideChem - directory of chemicals & chemical suppliers
ChemExper - Catalog of Chemical Suppliers - products from chemical suppliers
Fisher Scientific - product catalog
Sigma Aldrich - product catalog

CAS SciFinderⁿ This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
FIRST-TIME USERS: Click more... below to create an account to use SciFinder
Integrated in SciFinderⁿ, CHEMCATS provides verified available quantities, prices and supplier contact information for millions of commercially available products from hundreds of suppliers. Search under "Suppliers" by substance name or CAS RN.
To use SciFinder, you must create an account using your UMass Amherst email address. Click here to create the account.

After initial account creation, available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Estimating Chemical Prices with a Producer Price Index (PPI)

Present-day chemical prices can be estimated from historical chemical prices using a Producer Price Index (PPI), such as those produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for chemical and allied products, using the method described in Hubbard (2021):

Updated Price = Old Price x (PPI at New Date)/(PPI at Old Date)

See Hubbard, D. E. (2021, March), Efficacy of Using Producer Price Indexes for Bulk Chemical Prices in Student Design Projects Paper presented at ASEE 2021 Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference, Waco, Texas. https://peer.asee.org/36374