NPC Alliance Corporation

Company
NPC ALLIANCE CORPORATION (NPCA)

was established in August of 2005 as a world-class polyethylene plant in the Philippines. The Plant and
property presently occupy 187,200 square meters within PAFC Industrial Park Barangay Batangas II
Mariveles, Bataan, Philippines.
Today NPC Alliance Corporation is a dynamic player in the Petrochemical Industry, working hard and
providing high quality resin to meet the worlds rapidly increasing demand. Using the world-renowed
and award- winning INEOS Innovene Gas Phase Technology, The plant can produce 250,000 tonnes of
polyethylene resins annually.
NPCA produces premium quality, high-performance polyethylene resin employing the safest and most
environmentally sound polyethylene process in the world.
NPCA is composed of two identical trains, which use two types of catalyst. Each train produces
complementary products resulting in a diverse array of HDPE and LLDPE grades.
Process
Conversion of purified ethylene gas to polyethylene is the most important step of the process. There are
several of different processes that can be used to accomplish this conversion, but a common method
used is to polymerize ethylene by means of a fluidized reactor bed. The fluidized reactor bed consists of
metallic catalyst particles that are 'fluidized' by the flow of ethylene gas. The catalyst particles are
suspended in the ethylene fluid since ethylene gas is pumped from the bottom of the reactor bed to the
top. Metallic catalysts are very important for the process because the polymerization is impossible
without it. Before the late 1970's, an organic peroxide catalyst was used to initiate polymerization.
However, due to the organic peroxide catalyst is not as active as the metallic catalyst, pressures in
excess of 100 times the pressure required with metallic catalysts were needed (Bian et al., 2009).
Ethylene must be compressed and heated before it is sent to the fluidized bed. Pressures in the range of
100-300 psi and a temperature of 100 degrees Celsius are needed for the reaction to proceed at a
reasonable rate. Furthermore, a catalyst stream is also pumped with the ethylene stream into the
reactor since catalyst is consumed in the reactor. The catalyst is not actually consumed, it is simply
incorporated with the polyethylene product as polyethylene molecules remain stuck to the catalyst
particle from which they were produced. For a single pass through the reactor, the conversion of
ethylene is low and it is needed to recycle the unreacted ethylene. Unreacted ethylene gas is removed
to the top of the reactor, where it is expanded and decompressed to separate the catalyst and low
molecular weight polymer from the gas. Then the ethylene gas is recompressed and recycled back into
the reactor after purification. When the reasonable conversions have been achieved, granular
polyethylene is removed from the bottom of the reactor. A residence time of 3 to 5 hours will result in a
97% conversion of ethylene. By using mole balances, the flow in the fluidized bed reactor can be
modelled. Since the polymerization of ethylene reaction is exothermic, large amounts of heat are
liberated from the process. Heat is removed by cooling unreacted ethylene gas coming off the top of the
reactor and 8 recycling the cool gas back to the reactor. By using an energy balance, temperatures in the
fluidized bed reactor can be modelled (Bian et al., 2009). Polyethylene comes out of the reactor as
granular powder, which is melted and flows through a film extruder. The flow rate required to make the
polymer flow is determined by solving a boundary value problem (BVP), which comes from the
momentum balance (Bian et al., 2009). Originally, bags were made directly from tubular film by wedding
one end, but the tendency now is to make wide film on large machines and then make the bags by
welding and cutting. The bubble diameter may be up to 2 meters for general purpose packaging, and
larger for heavy gauge industrial film in the tubular film process. Additives are important in this process.
Without the additives, the pressure of the windup rollers on the warm film forces the surfaces into such
close contact that subsequently it may be impossible to separate them. Very fine silica can be used as an
anti-blocking agent to overcome this problem. It can roughen the surface on a submicroscopic scale
without significantly affecting the optical properties. The friction between the surfaces can be reduced
by adding the slip agents (Bian et al., 2009)
Product
HDPE is produced in low pressure reactors and so is referred to as high density polyethylene. HDPE has
the same repeat unit and is usually regarded as polyethylene with a density greater than 940 kg/m3 . It
differs from LDPE in that it contains fewer side branches at 5 to 10 per 1000 carbon atoms on the
backbone. Most of the side branches are short with long side branches being rare. The increased
stiffness and density were found to be due to a much lower level of chain branching. Molecular weights
are similar to low density polyethylene but crystallinities are usually high (50-85%) and densities range
from 940 to 960 kg/m3 (PE International, 2010). Two main techniques are used for the production of
HDPE: the suspension (slurry process) and the gas phase process. In gas phase polymerization, large
fluidized bed reactors are used, operating at relatively high pressure (20 - 30 bar), 11 with high ethylene
recycle through a gas cooler to remove heat of polymerization (International Finance Corporation,
2007). HDPE is one of the most popular plastics in use today. HDPE resins can be tailored to be used in
many applications such as film, crates, boxes, caps and closures, bottles and containers for food
products, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, household and industrial chemicals, toys, fuel tanks and other
automotive parts, pipes for gas and water distribution (Czaplicka-Kolarz et al., 2010).

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