Published December 1982
Most vinyl chloride is made from ethylene via ethylene dichloride. In this report, SRI examines two routes for making ethylene dichloride: chlorination and oxychlorination (Sections 6 and 7). For each route, several processes are evaluated and compared. We evaluate the pyrolysis of ethylene dichloride to form vinyl chloride in Section 8. A completely different route for making vinyl chloride starts with acetylene; processes by this route are evaluated in Section 5. Several integrated operations, including the most important balanced process, which consists of chlorination and oxychlorination of ethylene, and pyrolysis of the resulting ethylene dichloride, are evaluated in Section 9. Section 10 discusses other processes for making ethylene dichloride; an ammonium chloride process and an amine process are speculatively evaluated. Section 11 discusses other processes for making vinyl chloride; a process using a laser beam as an initiator is evaluated. The use of chlorine versus hydrogen chloride, the use of ethylene versus acetylene, the integration versus separate production of EDC and vinyl chloride, are compared and discussed in Section 4. Some data useful in design but not readily available in handbooks are given as Appendix A.
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