Nitrogen doped carbon catalyzing acetylene conversion to vinyl chloride

Commercial production of vinyl chloride from acetylene relies on the use of HgCl2 as the catalyst, which has caused severe environmental problem and threats to human health because of its toxicity. Therefore, it is vital to explore alternative catalysts without mercury. We report here that N-doped carbon can catalyze directly transformation of acetylene to vinyl chloride. Particularly, N-doped high surface area mesoporous carbon exhibits a rather high activity with the acetylene conversion reaching 77% and vinyl chloride selectivity above 98% at a space velocity of 1.0 mL.min(-1).g(-1) and 200 degrees C. It delivers a stable performance within a test period of 100 h and no obvious deactivation is observed, demonstrating potentials to substitute the notoriously toxic mercuric chloride catalyst.