Basel Spherizone Technology

The family of polymers, and in particular polyolefins, is important in the modern world because of the very high number of applications in all fields. Among plastic materials, polypropylene is one of the most important, having undergone rapid growth since its discovery in 1954 by the Nobel Prize winner G. Natta of Politecnico di Milano. Today, polypropylene demand is about 40 million ton per year with a market share, among all thermoplastic materials, of about 26%, which is second only to polyethylene (39%). 

Competition, in the market of polypropylene licensing technologies, has been a driving force to improve the available processes, with the aim of reducing the investment and variable costs obtained by a simplification of the process, reduction of raw materials and utilities consumptions, improving also the environmental impact with lower gas emission and liquid effluents. The evolution of catalysts and technology has allowed the polypropylene properties to be expanded, to fulfill the market demand and to widen its application. 

The predecessor company of BASELL (Montecatini Edison, Himont, Montell, Basell) has always been strongly committed to the research and development of new catalysts for polyolefin, and specifically polypropylene, production and in the continuous improvement of the production processes. 

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The development of the Spherizone technology started in 1995 and was subsequently scaled up from pilot plant to commercial size in 2002, when the new multi-zone circulating reactor (MZCR) was installed at Basell s plant in Brindisi, Italy. 

A recent development in this technology is the multizone circulating reactor (MZCR) developed by Basell ( Spherizone process), in which a given polymer particle flows back and forth between two reaction zones of a loop reactor, in each of which the conditions are different... 

Description The Spherizone process is Basell s new proprietary gas-loop reactor technology based on a Multi-Zone Circulating Reactor (MZCR) concept. Inside the reactor (1) the growing polymeric granule is continuously recirculating between two interrelated zones, where two distinct and different fluodynamic regimes are realized. 

Despite the success of the Spheripol process, Basell continue research aimed at improving product characteristics, widening the range of grades and developing the next generation of PP technology, the Spherizone process. 

A recent advancement in reactor technology has been the development of a fluid bed, multizone circulating reactor (MZCR) by Basell, called Spherizone. 

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