Sol–gel material as a support of organometallic catalyst for ethylene polymerization

Abstract The sol–gel procedure was applied to obtain powdery materials with different structures and morphology. It was possible to produce almost non-porous silica powder, with an extremely low surface area (ca. 4 m 2 /g) and very high uniformity of spherical particles as well as materials with various uniformity of particles and different porosity, most likely associated with increasing pore volume. Dependent on the properties of the carrier, the resulting supported vanadium catalysts (VOCl 3 /AlEt 2 Cl) showed significant differences concerning activity and stability. It was confirmed that improved hydrophobicity of the carrier’s surface may be useful and improve the activity of the syst…