What are xylenes used for?
Xylenes are an important raw material for the manufacture of a large number of intermediates, used to produce many items indispensable to our health, safety and comfort. These include common consumer goods such as pharmaceuticals, detergents, solvents, paints, etc. Mixed-xylenes are also the basic raw material to isolate paraxylene (used in PET for bottles and in the production of polyester fibres), metaxylene (used in PET for bottles and in plastics), and orthoxylene (also used in plastics). Some amount of xylenes can be found in gasoline . Of course, that is putting it in a nutshell ; for more, see the section Aromatics in everyday life.
