In the industry, a majority of the high-quality alpha olefins are made from high-purity ethylene.
Ethylene is the simplest olefin: it has just two carbons connected by a double bond. At Chevron Phillips Chemical, we practice two different ethylene-based technologies.
The “Full Range” technology enables us to produce all the possible chain lengths of alpha olefins, which range from C4 to greater than C30.
The “1-Hexene Select” technology is, as the name indicates, a catalyst technology that produces just one olefin, the 1-hexene, selectively. The process uses a proprietary chromium-based catalyst system and converts, via trimerization, ethylene gas to an olefinic product containing about 99 wt% 1-hexene.
Here’s an overview of our production process:
