Poylpropylene and High-Density Polyethylene

Phillips Petroleum Company and Plastics

In , polymer chemistry was still in its infancy. The key people at Phillips had little, if any, experience with plastics. But the company had a history of trying new ideas and supporting and funding their development.

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In , research director George Oberfell convinced founder Frank Phillips to investigate additional uses for natural gas liquids. Two years later, Oberfell established one of the world's first hydrocarbon research laboratories, moving the company into new arenas in the production and marketing of fuels and of raw materials for the chemical industries. In , he urged the company to acquire vast quantities of natural gas acreage and to pursue research on the separation of natural gas into its various components. So if Hogan and Banks's discovery was in fact serendipitous, it was not accidental: Phillips had set the stage for important innovations in the uses of natural gas.

In the late s, as World War II ground to a halt and wartime demands for oil diminished, Phillips looked for ways to expand its product lines. With large quantities of natural gas on hand, Phillips chemists and engineers investigated ways to utilize propylene and ethylene, products of the refining process. Hogan and Banks were assigned to study the processes by which these gases could be converted into gasoline components.

In the course of these investigations, Hogan and Banks began to study catalysts and what makes them work. In June , they set up an experiment in which they modified their original catalyst (nickel oxide) to include small amounts of chromium oxide. Ordinarily, the combination would be expected to produce low-molecular-weight hydrocarbons. They fed propylene, along with a propane carrier, into a pipe packed with catalyst and waited for the expected results.

As Paul Hogan recalls it, he was standing outside the laboratory when Banks came out saying, "Hey, we've got something new coming in our kettle that we've never seen before." Running inside, they saw that the nickel oxide had produced the expected liquids. But the chromium had produced a white, solid material. Hogan and Banks were looking at a new polymer: crystalline polypropylene. Hogan said his reaction was immediate: He sat down at his desk and wrote up a patent idea, and he and Banks both signed it.

With full support from Phillips management, Hogan and Banks quickly switched their research efforts from gasoline production to the development of plastics. Their first step was to omit the nickel to be sure the chromium was acting alone. The next was to use their new chromium catalyst to produce an ethylene polymer. Though polyethylene had been invented in the s (by the British company Imperial Chemical Industries), the production process required extreme pressures of 20 to 30 thousand pounds per square inch (psi), and it produced a branched, low-density polymer. In less than a year, Hogan and Banks developed a new process that required only a few hundred psi &#; and produced a high-density polyethylene (HDPE) far stiffer, harder and more heat-resistant than anything on the market. This new discovery launched Phillips into an entirely new industry: The manufacture of a family of polyolefin plastics that included both the polypropylenes and polyethylenes.

Phillips management nurtured the new plastics from laboratory discovery to commercial-scale production in less than six years &#; no small feat for an oil company new to the plastics industry! Today, chromium catalysts still account for most of the world's HDPE. Hundreds of different grades of resin are produced globally by a variety of manufacturing processes from scores of different variants on the original chromium catalyst.

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Not all plastic makes its way to the garbage patches once released into the aquatic environment. During our expeditions and cleanup missions, we have mainly seen and caught HDPE plastics (High-Density Polyethylene), with a smaller fraction comprised of LDPE (Low-Density Polyethylene) and PP (Polypropylene). Their density is lower than water, which makes them stay afloat and more likely to persist in the ocean for long periods.

Examples of plastic products we find in the ocean, typically made with HDPE, are:

• Fishing equipment, ghost nets
• Bottle caps
• Toothbrushes
• Detergent bottles
• Shampoo, conditioner, shower gel bottles
• Some types of beverage bottles
• Crates
• Pieces of buckets
• Toys

Ghost net lifted onboard the vessel in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, during the System 001/B mission

Examples of plastic caught during the System 001/B mission in .

Other plastic types usually wash up on the shore, or sink close to the coast. Examples of these plastic types are:

• Plastic bags
• Cigarette filters
• PET bottles (note: the cap does float)
• Styrofoam food- and beverage containers
• Straws
• Textiles made of plastic

With our Interceptor solutions, we aim to catch plastics before it beaches, sinks, or escapes to the ocean. Our ocean systems will tackle the legacy plastic already out there, as it can take decades before plastic pieces make it to the ocean garbage patches.

Learn more about plastic becomes ocean plastic on our Ocean Plastic Explained page.

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