Polyvinyl chloride or vinyl (PVC) is a polymer in which more than half of the content by weight consists of chlorine (Vesterberg et al., 2005). PVC is produced by polymerization of the vinyl chloride monomer. PVC comes in two basic forms: Rigid (sometimes abbreviated as RPVC) and flexible.
It is the world's third-most widely produced synthetic plastic polymer, after PE and PP. About 40 million tons are produced per year. Pure PVC is a white, brittle solid (although different PVC variants are designed to be very flexible) and strong. In the suspension polymerization of PVC, vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), water, initiator, buffer, suspending agent and other additives are charged to a polymerization reactor under pressure, and the reaction is allowed to continue over a period of hours until the desired degree of polymerization is achieved
