A PROCESS FOR THE SIMULTANEOUS OLIGOMERIZATION AND COPOLYMERIZATION OF ETHYLENE

High density polyethylene becomes more flexible and tough by adding short branches onto the otherwise linear backbone. Commercially, this is achieved by adding 1-butene or 1-hexene comonomer to reactor and copolymerizing it with ethylene. A process has now been developed which uses low pressure to produce new forms of branched polyethylene without addition of comonomer to the reaction mixture.