Effects of Various Mixed Metal Chlorides- AlCl3 in TiCl4/MgCl2/THF Catalytic System on Ethylene Polymerization

Nittaya Sudsong (Center of Excellence on Catalysis and Catalytic Reaction Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand)
Wanna Phiwkliang (Center of Excellence on Catalysis and Catalytic Reaction Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand)
Bunjerd Jongsomjit (Center of Excellence on Catalysis and Catalytic Reaction Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand)
Piyasan Praserthdam (Center of Excellence on Catalysis and Catalytic Reaction Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand)

ASEAN Journal of Chemical Engineering
Vol 14, No 2 (2014)

In this research, the modification of TiCl4/MgCl2/THF catalyst system with various metal chlorides was investigated on ethylene polymerization. Experimentally, metal chlorides (CaCl2, FeCl2 and ZnCl2) were simultaneously introduced different with TiCl4/MgCl2/THF catalyst. ICP analysis was used to determine the total amount of each metal in the catalyst. For polymerization reaction, TEA was used as cocatalyst and hexane was used as a medium solvent. The Al/Ti molar ratio was 140. The activity result of Ca-Al, Zn-Al and Fe-Al was 979, 1009 and 1476 kgPE/molTi.h, respectively. The coaddition of AlCl3 and FeCl2 in TiCl4/MgCl2/THF catalyst system exhibited the highest activity. It suggested that the co-addition of AlCl3 and FeCl2 has higher electronegativity (EN) and the radius of Fe2+ is closer to Mg2+ resulting in an increased efficiency of the THF removal. This result led to improve the catalyst performance.