Basell's Multizone Circulating Reactor (MZCR) Process

Basell recently announced their new Multizone Circulating Reactor (MZCR) or Spherizone. technology. This new process is a gas-phase process for producing polypropylene. It consists of a circulating loop reactor with two interconnected zones. The two zones can have very different gas compositions. Polymer granules are continuously exchanged between the two zones improving granules' homogeneity. Basell claims this process can produce polymer with improved properties and homogeneity. In this review, we evaluated the capital investment costs and economics for production of polypropylene using the MZCR process for the production of bimodal MWD polypropylene homopolymer. We compared the results to those from the Unipol. process for bimodal MWD polypropylene homopolymer production.