VCM production

Let's break some ice.

Fasting month started 2 days ago. As majority of people here are muslims, most cafeterias shut down for the brunch, and they extend their business hours until mid-mid night! I am kind of happy about it, cos I like to have supper mar!!...But then, I will have to starve in the daytime say nobody tapao or I'm too lazy to ask for tapao.

Another thing, the feichai's blog has already been upgraded to forum!
Come and join us! It's fun. Click here.
The president is doing interns in Intel, but he seems very free lol...makan gaji buta ke? haha...

Talking back about topic.

VCM stands for Vinyl Chloride Monomer. It's a monomer intermediate for producing polyvinyl chloride (PVC), essentially used for rigid plastic piping. VCM is one of the largest dollar-valued commodity chemicals in the State. The majors in this industry are Dow Chemical, PPG and Geon.

Why am I even concerned about it? You may say that it's a chemical what! Actually, I am forced to as it is my topic out of 3 for PPD assignment(Process Plant Design). By the way, the other two topics are nothing better than this, namely methanol production and toluene production.

Well, I would say it's very relevant to the course and it's in fact the right thing to do, but then it's going very detailed and it's definitely not the nice thing to do. Mr Khor, you are wise! You get us this time! I was expecting something like the past course Strength Of Material (SOM) which is way easier and senang than PPD. (P/s: Mr Khor is the lecturer for both.)

We, the whole 3rd year 1st sem che students have suffered so much over it. It's freaking time consuming because we have to do lots of literature review in this particular process as lots of process specifications are required. Besides that, we have gotta draw a very complicated process flow diagram review on the economic aspect of the production. Worst of all, it's individual work! Ngah Di...

There are altogether 3 memo (reports) to pass up. If I were to work continuously 48 hours, I probably could get it done straight away. (48 hours har!!) It just takes so much time lar. Wonder how many percentage it takes for the course.

So, how is VCM produced? Simply react ethylene with chlorine (Direct Chloorination) to get ethylene dichloride (EDC) which is later be thermally cracked or pyrolysis into VCM. It may sound simple but there are lots of details to take care, I swear!

Anyway, the first memo (report) is done. (P/s: 3 memo altogether!) The following 2 are coming up and they are kind of tougher. I am sure that we are going to have a "good time" again.