Nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (N-CNTs) are found to be active as one novel heterogeneous catalyst for acetylene hydrochlorination reaction, possessing good activity (TOF=2.3×10(-3)  s(-1) ) and high selectivity (>98 %). Compared to toxic and energy-consuming conventional catalysts, such as HgCl2 , N-CNTs are more favorable in terms of sustainability, because of their thermo-stability, metal-free make up, and the wide availability of bulk CNT. Coupling X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and density functional theory computations (DFT), the main active source and reaction pathway are shown. Good linearity between the quaternary nitrogen content and conversion is revealed. DFT study shows that the nitrogen doping enhanced the formation of the covalent bond between C2 H2 and NCNT compared with the undoped CNT, and therefore promoted the addition reaction of the C2 H2 and HCl into C2 H3 Cl.

Gold has been proposed as an environmentally friendly catalyst for acetylene hydrochlorination for vinyl chloride monomer synthesis by replacing the commercially used mercury catalyst. However, long life with excellent activity of is difficult to achieve since gold is readily reduced to metallic nano-particles. The stability of gold limits its industrial application. In this paper, we promoted gold with bismuth for the hydrochlorination of acetylene. It was found that the Bi promotion leads to partial reduction to AuCl, rather than the complete reduction of Au to metallic nano-particles in the absence of Bi. The optimized catalyst with a molar ratio of Bi:Au=3:1 (0.3 wt% Au) showed comparable reactivity to 1.0 wt% Au catalyst and significantly improved stability. Furthermore, the gold-bismuth catalyst had higher activity and stability than the commercial mercury catalyst, is less toxic and more environmental-friendly, making it a potentially green mercuryfree industrial catalyst for acetylene hydrochlorination.

China has the world's largest polyvinyl chloride (PVC) production capacity, comprising over 20 Mt a−1and occupying 41% of the world production capacity.

Porous glass supported with TiO2nanoparticles acted as an amphiphilic catalyst. Because of good adsorptive properties for both reactants, the support gathers the two reactants on the active sites.