PROCESOS

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Lecture 16 : Vinyl Chloride from Ethylene

Introduction
• In this lecture we study the process technology involved in the production of Vinyl
Chloride from Ethylene.
• Vinyl chloride is produced in a two step process from ethylene.
• Ethylene first reacts with Chlorine to produce Ethylene dichloride.
• The purified Ethylene dichloride undergoes selective cracking to form vinyl chloride.
• We first present the process technology associated to Ethylene Chloride .!

16.1 Ethylene dichloride


16.1.1 Reactions
• C2H4 + Cl2 → C2H4Cl2
• Undesired products: Propylene dichloride and Polychloroethanes.
• Reaction occurs in a liquid phase reactor with ethylene dichloride serving as the
liquid medium and reactants reacting the liquid phase.
• Catalyst is FeCl3 or Ethylene dibromide.

16.1.2 Process Technology (Figure 16.1)

Figure 16.1 Flow sheet of production of ethylene dichloride

• C2H4 and Cl2 are mixed and sent to the liquid phase reactor.
• Here, the feed mixture bubbles through the ethylene dichloride product medium.
• Reactor operating conditions are 50°C and 1.5 – 2 atms.
• The reaction is exothermic. Therefore, energy is removed using either cooling jacket
or external heat exchanger.
• To facilitate better conversion, circulating reactor designs are used.
• FeCl3 traces are also added to serve as catalyst.
• The vapour products are cooled to produce two products namely a vapour product
and a liquid product. The liquid product is partially recycled back to the reactor to
maintain the liquid médium concentration.
• The vapour product is sent to a refrigeration unit for further cooling which will
further extract ethylene dichloride to liquid phase and makes the vapour phase bereft
of the product.
• The liquid product is crude ethylene dichloride with traces of HCl. Therefore, acid
wash is carried out first with dilute NaOH to obtain crude ethylene dichloride. A settling
tank is allowed to separate the spent NaOH solution and crude C2H4Cl2 (as well liquid).
• The crude ethylene dichloride eventually enters a distillation column that separates
the ethylene dichloride from the other heavy end products.
• The vapour phase stream is sent to a dilute NaOH solution to remove HCl and
produce the spent NaOH solution. The off gases consist of H2, CH4, C2H4 and C2H6.

16.1.3 Technical questions


1. Provide an insight into the liquid phase guided gas phase reaction?
Ans: The liquid phase acts as a resistance phase for the movement of various gases.
The recirculator enables greater turbulence of the liquid phase stream. Thereby, using
these mechanisms, the gases are allowed to react with one another and produce
ethylene dichloride which gets disolved in the liquid.
2. Why a water condenser followed by refrigeration is used when the single
refrigeration can serve the purpose of cooling ?Ans: This is an important question.
Allowing only refrigeration enhances process costs drastically. Therefore, water is used
to carry out partial condensation and then refrigeration, even though in principle,
wáter condensation can be bypassed and reactor operation and stream contacting can
be further optimized.
3. Why do we need a settling tank after the acid wash unit associated to the
crude ethylene dichloride ? Ans: Typically, we observe HCL removal from vapour
streams. In such case, the unit used is a scrubber or absorber. The gas/vapour is fed
to the absorption column and is obtained as a gas. When a liquid is allowed for
scrubbing, it is possible to obtain emulsions of the organic phase in the aqueous
phase. Therefore, provide gravity settling mechanism should exist so as to separate
the crude ethylene dichloride from the mixture emanating from the acid wash tank.

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