Ethylene polymerization on polymer supported Ziegler-Natta catalyst

Abstract

Poly(styrene-co-methyl methacrylate) has been used as a support for titanium based Ziegler–Natta catalyst. We have prepared three polymer supported catalysts by varying the weight ratio of TiCl4 and polymer to perform the ethylene polymerization. Triethylaluminium (TEA) is used as cocatalyst. Catalysts have been characterized by XPS, FT-IR, UV-visible spectroscopy, XRD, pH meter, TGA and SEM-EDX. The catalysts are found to be stable upto 100 °C. Density functional theory (DFT) has been used to elucidate the structure of TiCl4 and the polymer supported complex. All these spectroscopic analysis and density functional study confirm the incorporation of titanium into the polymer matrix. The catalytic activity is found to be in the range of 0.6–1.01 kg of polyethylene (PE)/g Ti/h and the catalytic activity depends on the optimum level of Ti content. The molecular weight ( $$ \overline {{M_w}} $$ ) of PE is in the range of 237,300–275,600 g/mol. Present study also reports the stability and storability of the catalysts.