Nitrogen‐Doped Carbon-Assisted One‐pot Tandem Reaction for Vinyl Chloride Production via Ethylene Oxychlorination

Abstract

A bifunctional catalyst comprising CuCl2/Al2O3 and nitrogen‐doped carbon was developed for an efficient one‐pot ethylene oxychlorination process to produce vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) up to 76 % yield at 250 °C and under ambient pressure, which is higher than the conventional industrial two‐step process (≈50 %) in a single pass. In the second bed, active sites containing N‐functional groups on the metal‐free N‐doped carbon catalyzed both ethylene oxychlorination and ethylene dichloride (EDC) dehydrochlorination under the mild conditions. Benefitting from the bifunctionality of the N‐doped carbon, VCM formation was intensified by the surface Cl*‐looping of EDC dehydrochlorination and ethylene oxychlorination. Both reactions were enhanced by in situ consumption of surface Cl* by oxychlorination, in which Cl* was generated by EDC dehydrochlorination. This work offers a promising alternative pathway to VCM production via ethylene oxychlorination at mild conditions through a single pass reactor.