To produce high-purity hexene-1 that is suitable for copolymers in LLDPE production via the new AlphaHexol process developed by IFP and based on selective ethylene homogeneous trimerization.
Polymer-grade ethylene is oligomerized in a liquid-phase reactor (1) with a liquid homogeneous catalyst system that has high activity and selectivity.
Liquid effluent and spent catalyst are then separated (2); the liquid is distilled (3) for recycling unreacted ethylene to the reactor and fractionated (4) to produce high-purity hexene-1. Spent catalyst is treated to remove volatile hydrocarbons before safe disposal. The process is simple; it operates in liquid phase at mild operating temperature and pressure, and only carbon steel equipment is required. The technology has several advantages over other hexene-1 production or supply sources: ethylene feed efficient use, uniformly high-quality product, low impurities and low capital costs.
Yields: LLDPE copolymer grade hexene-1 is produced with a purity exceeding 99 wt%. Typical product specification is:
• Internal olefins < 0.5
• n-Hexane < 0.2
• Carbon less than C6s < 0.25
• Carbon more than C6s < 0.25
Licensor: Axens
