Acetylene vs. Ethylene as a Chemical Raw Material

Published September 1976

Several industrially important chemical intermediates can be produced either from acetylene or from ethylene. In this report, the costs of making these two raw materials are evaluated, and the economics of producing vinyl chloride, vinyl acetate, and acetaldehyde from them are compared.

The best available information on process conditions, plant investment, and operating requirements for each route have been assembled from past PEP reports and/or from outside sources. This information is presented briefly in Sections 4 through 14 of the report. The economics results are summarized and compared in Section 2.