Vinyl Chloride Plant Accident

About 13 billion kilograms are produced annually.

Vinyl chloride plant accident.

Formosa plastics vinyl chloride explosion location. For some reason they forgot to mention in their. The accident took place just one week before the vinyl institute was in nyc arguing pvc was perfectly safe. Vinyl chloride is a colorless gas that burns easily.

Vinyl chloride is most often used to make polyvinyl chloride a plastic that s used to make shower curtains cling wrap pipes carpeting packaging material and all sorts of other items. Whether or not vinyl chloride itself was released the high death toll says several things about this accident. It is also known as chloroethene chloroethylene ethylene monochloride or monochloroethylene. An explosion at a vinyl chloride monomer ethylene plant in mexico on april 20 killed 13 people and may impact the country s chloralkali industry.

Pvc is used to make a variety of plastic products including pipes wire and cable coatings and packaging materials. Vinyl chloride is a colorless gas at normal temperatures. Vinyl chloride is used primarily to make polyvinyl chloride pvc. Tosoh sgm corporation located in the vicinity of the no 2 vinyl chloride monomer plant quartz materials manufacturing subsidiary tosoh sgm corporation sustained damage to its synthetic quartz manufacturing facilities and its shipping department in the accident but has recovered and operations are gradually restarting.

What is vinyl chloride. Chemical manufacturing fire and explosion investigation status. The trend in modern petrochemical operations is to reduce staffing to the point that in emergencies or during strikes an entire plant can be operated safely from. It is flammable burns easily as a gas and is not stable at high temperatures.

The csb s final report on this investigation was issued at a news conference in springfield illinois on march 6 2007. The following operations are active. Chloride and hydrochloric acid through the community. Vinyl chloride exists in liquid form if it is kept under high pressure or at low temperatures less than 13 4ï c.

The accident forced area residents and plant workers to shelter in place for several hours shut roads and even led to the closure of a 45 mile section of the mississippi river. It does not occur naturally and must be produced industrially for its commercial uses. Vinyl chloride is an organochloride with the formula h 2 c chcl that is also called vinyl chloride monomer vcm or chloroethene this colorless compound is an important industrial chemical chiefly used to produce the polymer polyvinyl chloride pvc. First one can ask why there were so many people in a hazardous area.