三菱化学(株)の開発したモノエチレングリコールを製造の為の新規触媒プロセスは、80年間世界中で用いられてきた従来プロセスに対し、選択率99％以上（従来89％）を達成した。石油化学資源が、人類にとって、少しずつ、希少なモノとの意識の変化の中、無駄な反応を起こさない（上述、選択率）、無駄な資源を用いない（建設費、変動費20%削減）、また環境にもフ゜ロセス排水20％削減と、本技術の特徴を紹介したい。

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Ethylene glycol (EG), mainly as raw material for antifreeze and polyester fiber, has now been used world-wide and occupies one of the most important places among the basic petro-chemicals. All the commercial plants for EG today utilize the hydration process of ethylene oxide (EO) produced by the oxidation of ethylene in the presence of a silver catalyst. The first commercial process, however, was the chlorohydrin process developed by T. Goldschmidt A.-G. during World War I and C.C.C. in 1925 individually, and next, the dichloroethane saponification process and the formaldehyde process by du Pont were developed in Germany and USA respectively. The hydration process next came up, having gained the main position in the production of EG by the latter half of '50 th. Currently the EO production by this process amounts to 4.6 million tons a year, about 70 percent of which is consumed in EG production.
Now, however, due to the striking rise in price of the raw material, ethylene, especially after the world oil crisis in 1973, some technical improvement for the oxidation process is strongly requested to cut down its cost. During the past few years, two new processes, the liquid phase oxidation process and the synthesis gas process, have appeared before the footlight as economically feasible for making EG.

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