Polyethylene industrial uses

H. Iwasaki, M. Ishibashi, H. UeM, and S. Hiraoka. Process for producing polyethylene naphthalate. US Patent 5811513, assigned to Mitsui Petro-chemici Industries, Ltd. (Tokyo, IP), September 22,1998. 

L.Y.T. Yang and M. Dees, Chemically embossed metallocene polyethylene foam, US Patent 6140 379, assigned to Armstrong World Industries, Inc. (Lancaster, PA), October 31,2000. 

Iida, H., Kometani, K. and Yanagi, M., Polyethylene terephthalate moulding compositions, US Patent 4 284 540 (to Toray Industries, Tokyo, Japan), 1981. 

Although engineering plastics in the topic of this book, I would maintain that the end user must have broad product interests spanning the offerings of the entire industry. I would also maintain that while some of us close to the trees may view an engineering plastic as one having some balance of properties which are different from products like polyethylene or polystyrene and PVC, the end user doesn t necessarily have the same pair of glasses. 

Fig. 1. US total sales and captive use of selected thermoplastic resins by major market for 2001. Major market volumes are derived from plastic resins sales and captive use data as compiled by VERIS Consulting, LLC and reported by the American Plastics Council s Plastic Industry Producers Statistics Group. Selected thermoplastics are low-density polyethylene, linear low-density polyethylene, high-density polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon, polyvinyl chloride, thermoplastic polyester, engineering resins, acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene, styrene-acrylonitrile, other styrenics, polystyrene, and styrene butadiene latexes. (Data from ref. 25.)...

Polymers are very large molecules made up of repeating units. A majority of the compounds produced by the chemical industry are ultimately used to prepare polymers. These human-made or synthetic polymers are the plastics (polyethylene, polystyrene), the adhesives (epoxy glue), the paints (acrylics), and the fibers (polyester, nylon) that we encounter many times each day. It is difficult to picture our lives without these materials. In addition to these synthetic polymers, natural polymers such as wood, rubber, cotton, and wool are all around us. And, of course, life itself depends on polymers such as carbohydrates, proteins, and DNA. This chapter discusses synthetic polymers. Naturally occurring polymers are presented in Chapters 25, 26, and 27. 

In 2001 it was estimated that the world merchant market for catalysts was worth ca. US 25 billion, divided roughly equally between refining, petrochemicals, polymers, environmental (20-25% each) and with about 11% being used in fine chemicals. Refining is about the production of fuels (Chapter 3, Box 2), petrochemicals cover many of the basic commodity chemicals and the monomers required for the polymer industries fine chemicals include pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals, as well as flavours and fragrances and environmental is about exhaust gas and waste product clean-up. Vehicle catalytic converters use catalysts, as does the production of the main tonnage polymers polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and polyethylene terephthalate. 

In late 2011, other polyethylene producers also announced plans to increase ethylene capacity in the United States. These include Dow Chemical, Royal Dutch Shell, Bayer AG, Chevron Phillips Chemical Company and LyondellBasell [16,17]. McCarthy s report [16] provided testimony from the American Chemistry Coxmcil to the United States Congress stating that a sustained increase in domestic (United States) ethane supply from shale gas would result in 400,000 new jobs in the U.S.-based chemical industry and 132-billion (US. dollars) in added economic activity ... 

First let us consider analysis in general. I am neither a spec-troscopist nor a physical chemist but an analytical chemist working in an industrial research laboratory primarily concerned with exploring and developing new polymeric films. By films I mean not photographic film but thin plastic materials such as polyethylene, Mylar polyester film, etc. In our laboratory an engineer or chemist may walk in with a sample at any time and ask us a number Du Pont trademark. 

The characterization methods described in Chapter 2 are limited in what they can tell us about structure in the absence of any information about how a sample was made. Chapter 3 surveys the various types of reaction systems used in polymerization and describes the molecular structures that can be produced by each. Anionic and living free-radical polymerizations are used in the laboratory to prepare samples having ideal structures, while processes used in industry produce materials that more complex in structure. The commercial polymer with the most complex structure is low-density (highly branched) polyethylene. The development of single-site catalysts has led to the commercial production of polymers that, while they do not have the homogeneity of ideal samples, do have structures that are reproducible and simply described. 

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