Facile investigation of Ti3+ state in Ti-based ziegler-natta catalyst with a combination of cocatalysts using electron Spin resonance (ESR)

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the influences of a combination of cocatalysts including triethylalumi-num (TEA) and tri-n-octylaluminum (TnOA) for activation of a commercial Ti-based Ziegler-Natta cat-alyst during ethylene polymerization and ethylene/1-hexene copolymerization on the change in Ti3+ during polymerization. Thus, electron spin resonance (ESR) technique was performed to monitor the change in Ti3+ depending on the catalyst activation by a single and combination of cocatalyst. It re-vealed that the amount of Ti3+ played a crucial role on both ethylene polymerization and ethylene/1-hexene copolymerization. For ethylene polymerization, the activation with TEA apparently resulted in the highest catalytic activity. The activation with TEA+TnOA combination exhibited a moderate activi-ty, whereas TnOA activation gave the lowest activity. In case of ethylene/1-hexene copolymerization, it revealed that the presence of 1-hexene decreased activity. The effect of different cocatalysts tended to be similar to the one in the absence of 1-hexene. The decrease of temperature from 80 to 70 °C in eth-ylene/1-hexene copolymerization tended to lower catalytic activity for TnOA and TEA+TnOA, whereas only slight effect was observed for TEA system. The effect of different cocatalyst activation on the change of Ti3+ state of catalyst was elucidated by ESR measurement. It appeared that the activation of catalyst with TEA+TnOA combination essentially inhibited the reduction of Ti3+ to Ti2+ leading to lower activity. Furthermore, the polymer properties such as morphology and crystallinity can be altered by different cocatalysts.