Influence of temperature on ethylene octene-1 copolymerization catalyzed by supported metallocene catalyst

Abstract A supported (nBuCp)2ZrCl2 metallocene catalyst was prepared and used in the slurry copolymerization of ethylene/octene-1 with triethylaluminium (TEAL) as co-catalyst. The effects of polymerization temperature on the properties of both the catalyst and resulted copolymers were investigated. The results show that the yield of supported metallocene catalyst reaches 4.3 kgPE/gcat and the bulk density of PE is higher than 0.4 g/cm3, the fines content of the polymer is less than 12.0 wt%, and the molecular weight distribution (MWD) of products ranges from 2.9 to 4.0 within the polymerization temperature range of 73~88 °C. These results are beneficial for large-scale industrialization of supported metallocene catalysts, and also provide a reference for academic research.