Global Polyolefin Catalysts Markets, Technologies Trends - 2008-2012

摘要

Polyolefins are a vital component of the chemicals, petrochemicals and plastics value chain. Today when a new cracker project is proposed, it is almost guaranteed that polyolefins units will follow. Catalysts are at the heart of the polyolefin manufacturing process and have been the linchpin of plastics business. The catalyst technology used can significantly change the competitiveness of a process technology. For the past 50 years, one of the foundations of polyolefins manufacture has been the Ziegler-Natta catalysts, named after their inventors Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta, who first unearthed their effect in 1953 and won the Nobel Prize for it in 1963. In addftion to these catalysts was the chromium catalysts primarily used in the production of HDPE using slurry processes. All of these conventional catalysts are limited in their ability to engineer the resin end-product owing to their heterogeneous nature. Then came the metallocenes promising to fix all these problems, but had (and continue to have) issues of their own. Metallocene-based resins initially entered the market as specialties, but have slowly transitioned to be differentiated products.