Vinyl Chloride General Chemisty and Use - Team Delta - Damein Watt Repost

General Chemistry and Use
Vinyl chloride is the organic compound with the formula C2H3Cl. Vinyl chloride burns easily and it is not stable at high temperatures. It is a manufactured compound that does not occur naturally. Vinyl can be produced when other substances such as trichloroethane, trichloroethylene, and tetrachloroethylene are degrade in the environment. This colorless compound is an important industrial chemical chiefly used to produce the polymer polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
Vinyl chloride, also known as chloroethene, is a halogenated aliphatic hydrocarbon with an empirical formula of C2H3Cl and a molecular weight of 62.5. It is a colorless gas with a mild sweetish odor, a melting point of -153.71 °C, a boiling point of -13.8°C, a specific gravity of 0.9121 g/mL, and a vapor pressure of 2580 torr. The odor threshold for vinyl chloride is 3,000 ppm. Vinyl chloride is slightly soluble in water and is quite flammable. The vapor pressure for vinyl chloride is 2,600 mm Hg at 25 °C, and it has a log octanol/water partition coefficient (log Kow) of 1.36.

Production from Ethylene dichloride
The production of vinyl chloride from dichloroethylene or ethylene dichloride (EDC) consists of a series of well defined steps. Ethylene dichloride (EDC) can be produced using the direct chlorination method, oxychlorination method, or using acetylene as a feedstock. To produce vinyl chloride, ethylene dichloride is decomposed by heating the compound to 500°C at 15–30 atm (1.5 to 3 MPa) pressure, producing vinyl chloride and HCl:

ClCH2CH2Cl → CH2=CHCl + HCl

The effluent stream is then chilled using a refrigerant prior to being processed in a series of distillation towers. The last distillation tower has pure HCl going from the top and product vinyl chloride coming out of the bottom. The recycled HCl is used to produce more EDC yielding a cost efficient method of production. This method is widely used cause of the environmental and economical advantages.


References:
M. Rossberg, & Allen, D. T. (2009, Oct). Vinyl chloride [Electronic version]. In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 11, 2009, from Vinyl chloride: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_chloride

Vinyl Chloride. (2006, July). Retrieved April 3, 2009, from http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp20-c4.pdf: Center for Disease Control

About Vinyl and PVC. (2008, April). Retrieved April 7, 2009, fromhttp://www.vinylbydesign.com/site/page.asp?CID=1&DID=2: Vinyl in Design