The rapid development of industry has placed higher demands on water treatment technology, which has further promoted the development of water treatment chemicals. The 1960s and 70s were a period of great development for water treatment chemicals, with various chemicals experiencing their respective peak periods. During this time, numerous technological breakthroughs emerged, and the variety, quantity, and output all showed a significant upward trend. To effectively achieve corrosion inhibition, scale inhibition, and sterilization, and to better control pollution and public nuisance caused by wastewater discharge, new types of organic corrosion inhibitors, organic scale inhibitors, and organic bactericides were gradually developed and used.

The upstream of the industrial water treatment chemicals industry mainly includes basic chemical raw materials, specialty chemicals, auxiliary materials, equipment, and packaging materials. Downstream application areas mainly include display panels, electronic semiconductors, waste-to-energy renewable energy, chemicals, petrochemicals, photovoltaics, automobiles, and papermaking.

In recent years, starting from the establishment and implementation of the scientific outlook on development, the development of a circular economy, and the construction of a resource-saving and environment-friendly society and other major strategic ideas, the state has taken water treatment technology and improving the recycling rate as important hard indicators for the implementation of “energy conservation and emission reduction”, not only has it accelerated the pace of the construction of water treatment and recycling facilities, but alsoThe concept and technical route of water treatment have been upgraded, so that the water treatment industry has begun to advance from low cycle magnification to high cycle magnification, from ”standard discharge“ to ”full reuse“ and ”zero discharge", from phosphorus-containing specialty chemicals to phosphorus-free specialty chemicals, and from having a slow impact on the environment. Specialty chemicals are advancing towards fully biodegradable and friendly specialty chemicals. In order to meet the requirements of environmental protection and sustainable development, the market size of China's industrial water treatment chemicals has accelerated. According to statistics, the market size reached 67.2 billion yuan in 2024, and the CAGR from 2019 to 2024 is about 5.63%.

There are a large number of participating manufacturers of water treatment products in our country, mainly concentrated in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong and Henan regions. There are hundreds of water treatment products developed by our country, such as flocculants, corrosion inhibitors, scale inhibitors, fungicides and supporting pre-film agents, cleaning agents, defoamers, etc. Various water treatment chemicals have basically met domestic needs from output to quality, and with the improvement of the maturity of the domestic market, they have entered a period of steady development. Technically speaking, the production technology and performance of some products are already at the international leading level.