As an industry leader, OxyVinyls develops and licenses its EDC and VCM technologies to qualified manufacturers around the world. OxyVinyls has granted more than 75 EDC/VCM plant licenses.
Since the early 1960s, OxyVinyls professionals have been providing services required to select, design, construct, start up, and operate the most efficient EDC, VCM, and PVC facilities. OxyVinyls' licensing program now focuses solely on EDC and VCM technologies and provides highly trained technical specialists with expertise in process design and development, training, start-up assistance, and an effective, ongoing technical assistance and support program.
OxyVinyls' licensing program also includes a "know-how" exchange program that facilitates meetings every two years for participating licensees to discuss and exchange improvement ideas and technological advances.
OxyVinyls' Plant Design
OxyVinyls' technology offers flexible configuration options, allowing the use of a wide range of feedstock properties. For example, production processes can accommodate vapor, liquid, or cell gas chlorine, polymer grade or impure ethylene, and oxygen from cryogenic or pressure swing adsorption units.
The OxyVinyls' process can be configured to accept imports of EDC, HCl and chlorinated organic liquids from other manufacturing processes. Plants can also produce sales grade EDC for export, if desired.
Computer process control systems, emissions monitoring, and procedures required by plant specifications all contribute to a safe working and community environment.
OxyVinyls' plant designs incorporate:
High raw material efficiencies
High on-stream factors
Energy conservation and recovery features
Proven construction materials to minimize capital and maintenance costs
Sophisticated, state-of-the-art distributed control and safety interlock systems
Productive and efficient operating processes
Catalyst Products
OxyVinyls offers a full range of patented catalyst products for VCM production. OxyVinyls' catalyst products include Oxychlor® fluid bed oxychlorination catalysts, Catoxid® fluid bed catalytic oxidation catalyst and Super H-2® acetylene hydrogenation catalyst.
VCM Technology
OxyVinyls led the development of a "balanced" process for producing VCM from chlorine and ethylene feedstocks with the introduction of fluid bed oxychlorination technology. OxyVinyls' current licensing technology is in its eighth generation. Plants currently using OxyVinyls' technology constitute more than a third of the world's ethylene-based VCM capacity.
OxyVinyls' processes offer flexible configuration options, allowing a range of ethylene-based feedstocks. Vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) manufacturing begins with the production of ethylene dichloride (EDC), also known as 1, 2-dichloroethane. EDC can be produced by combining ethylene and chlorine via either direct chlorination, which uses elemental chlorine and ethylene, or oxychlorination, in which ethylene reacts with the chlorine in hydrogen chloride (HCl).
In the direct chlorination process, chlorine is added to ethylene to produce EDC.
C2H4 + Cl2 → C2H4Cl2
VCM is made by
cracking EDC to yield equimolar amounts of VCM and hydrogen chloride (HCl).
C2H4Cl2 → C2H3Cl + HCl
This HCl is recovered in the subsequent VCM purification step, and reacted with oxygen and additional ethylene in the
oxychlorination process to make more EDC.
C2H4 + 2HCl + ½O2 → C2H4Cl2 + H2O
Combining these three reaction steps into an integrated operation forms the basis for the balanced VCM process, in which vinyl chloride is made from chlorine, ethylene and oxygen.
C2H4 + Cl2 → C2H4Cl2
2 C2H4Cl2 → 2 C2H3Cl + 2 HCl
C2H4 + 2HCl + ½O2 → C2H4Cl2 + H2O
overall,
2 C2H4 + Cl2 + ½O2 → 2 C2H3Cl + H2O
Other components of the VCM process include VCM purification, EDC purification,
hydrogenation and byproduct separation and
catalytic oxidation.
Balanced VCM Process
