disclosed is a process and apparatus for heat recovery in vinyl chloride monomer manufacturing plants or in integrated vinyl chloride monomer / polyvinyl chloride manufacturing plants . a process for capture and use of excess heat recovered in the production of vinyl chloride includes distillatively purifying dce in a high - boilers column , using a heat exchanger to capture thermal energy from a purified dce vapor stream from the high - boilers column , generating low pressure steam from the captured thermal energy , returning condensed dce vapors to the high - boilers column , and heating parts of the plant with the generated low pressure steam .