[Polyethylene was first synthesized by the German chemist Hans von Pechmann, who

[7][a][b][c]
prepared it by accident in 1898 while investigating diazomethane. When his
colleagues Eugen Bamberger and Friedrich Tschirner characterized the white, waxy substance
that he had created, they recognized that it contained long −CH2− chains and termed it
[9]
polymethylene. The first industrially practical polyethylene synthesis (diazomethane is a
notoriously unstable substance that is generally avoided in industrial application) was
again accidentally discovered in 1933 by Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson. A Ziegler–
Natta catalyst, named after Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta, is a catalyst used in the
synthesis of polymers of 1-alkenes (alpha-olefins).

Usually, combinations of reactors are used, for example one or two loop
reactors are combined with one or two fluidized bed reactors. A special case is
the BORSTAR process that runs the loop reactor under supercritical conditions
with propane as the slurrifying agent. bimodal polyethylene process is one of the
most advanced commercial methods to produce bimodal poly- ethylene, and it
was originally developed by the Borealis Co. ... The raw materials include ethylene, 1-butene,
hydrogen, propane, nitrogen, Ziegler− Natta catalyst, and cocatalyst (AlEt3)