Mitsui Corporation of Japan Develops High Strength HDPE

Japan's Mitsui Chemicals recently announced that it has successfully developed a new type of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) using a new type of catalyst in a pilot plant, and plans to build a commercial production facility using this catalyst by 2007. . Mitsui Chemicals said that this HDPE has a high strength and produces pipes and films that are 30% thinner than traditional HDPE pipes and membranes, significantly reducing raw material costs. Mitsui Chemicals hopes that this product will become the core product of the next-generation HDPE. Although the company has not yet finalized the capacity of the new plant, it is expected that the production capacity will exceed 200,000 tons/year from the perspective of cost advantage. The process technology is likely to use the metallocene LLDPE gas phase method, because Mitsui Chemicals has accumulated a wealth of experience in this area. The new-generation polyolefin catalyst developed by Mitsui Chemicals Corporation has a catalytic effect 300 times that of metallocene catalysts. It not only produces ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene, but also obtains molecular design with special properties. The catalyst showed better affinity with HDPE and the company decided to bring this product to market as soon as possible.