Published October 1970
Drastic changes have occurred in vinyl chloride monomer manufacture within the past decade. The long established process of hydrochlorinaing carbide-derived acetylene has virtually disappeared. For a time it appeared that the major departure might be the use of the less expensive hydrocarbon-derived acetylene but two other processes soon became the prime competitors in vinyl chloride manufacture. One of these is based on hydrocarbon pyrolysis to yield a mixture of acetylene and ethylene, which is consecutively hydrochlorinated and chlorinated. The other process is the chlorination-oxychlorination of ethylene. In recent years the latter has become the dominant process. Reliable ethylene chlorination-oxychlorination processes are now offered by a number of licensors and have been developed to a point where there is little opportunity for substantial further improvement in the basic process.
The incentive for development of new vinyl chloride processes was of course the high cost of acetylene. Ethylene offered promise of lower overall costs, even at the expense of a more complex process and larger capital investment. The present report deals with two new processes that in effect constitute process simplifications and capital investment reductions, either in relation to the process for producing vinyl chloride monomer itself or in the hydrocarbons and chlorine raw materials for vinyl chloride production, or both.
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