Question

Suppose your principal objective is to maximize the selectivity of monochloroethane production relative to dichloroethane production. would you design the reactor for a high or low conversion of ethane? explain your answer. (hint: if the reactor contents remained in the reactor long enough for most of the ethane in the feed to be consumed, what would the main product constituent probably be?) what additional processing steps would almost certainly be carried out to make the process economically sound?

Answer 1

We are given the series of chemical reactions:

Ethane is chlorinated in a continuous reactor:

C2H6 + Cl2 --> C2H5Cl + HCl

But some of the product monochloroethane becomes further chlorinated by an undesired side reaction:

C2H5Cl + Cl2 --> C2H4Cl2 + HCl

So to avoid the product monochloroethane to be further chlorinated, there must be fast processing or fast conversion of ethane so that there would less time for further chlorination. Hence we must design the reactor for high conversion of ethane.

To make the process economical, there must be a downstream separation step that would separate the main product monochloroethane from the undesired product dichloroethane.