Published July 2005
Vinylidene chloride (VDC) copolymers are the best plastic packing material for air-blocking and moisture blocking performances. They are not like polyvinyl alcohol, which has falling airblocking features under moisture environment; nor like nylon film, which has less effective moisture-blocking property with water absorption. At present, only a few large international companies in the world are producing these product; they are Solvin (a joint venture of Solvay of Belgium and BASF of Germany), Dow of the United States, and Asahi Chemical and Kureha of Japan. Recently, a 10,000 t/yr VDC copolymer plant has been installed in China along with several coated film production lines.
This study reviews current development of technology for the production of VDC copolymers, and presents economics for a suspension process for VDC-vinyl chloride copolymer resin, and an emulsion process for VDC-acrylates latex. Also presented, are the economics for the two processes integrated with VDC production.
