Polypropylene by LyondellBasell's Spheripol Process

LyondellBasell's Spheripol process is the most widely used process to produce polypropylene. More than 22 million tons of Spheripol process capacity has been licensed worldwide. The Spheripol process is a bulk slurry process. The most typical Spheripol configuration used is two slurry loop reactors in series to form propylene homopolymer or random copolymer and at least one downstream gas-phase reactor to produce propylene heterophasic impact copolymer. In this review, the process economics for Spheripol process were updated. The evaluation was based on a single-line plant capacity of 400,000 mta propylene impact copolymer.