With a global production volume of over 140 million metric tons per year, polyolefins are not only one of the most successful classes of commodity polymers ever devised, but civilization and the quality of life as we know it, will be dependent upon these materials far into the future. Not surprisingly, new market opportunities for polyolefins are typically dominated by big business, and accordingly, a fair question to ask is whether a start-up company in this field can be successful. In partial response, this talk will present a progress report on Precision Polyolefins, LLC (PPL) - a university spin-out company that is commercializing a transformational new technology - living coordinative chain transfer polymerization (LCCTP) - that, for the first time, provides access to practical quantities of a large variety of new fundamental forms of polyolefins of tailored molecular structure, tunable molecular weights and very narrow molecular weight distributions from traditional olefin feedstocks. Most notably, PPL has recently validated LCCTP on a pilot-scale within commercial reactors for production of new classes of ultra-low molecular weight 'n-PAO' base stock oils and of high molecular weight polypropylene-based thermoplastic elastomers.

PPL (the smallest polyolefins company in the world) - from start-up to scale-up

251st National Meeting (2016)

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