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The oil refinement
process, from which benzene, diesel and GPL are obtained, also produces
heavy naphthas. Via a procedure called cracking, these naphthas are
transformed into ethylene, which, after a series of further processing,
gives rise to polyethylene.
Polyethylene production is also an
economically efficient and ecologically smart way of making use of a
component of crude oil, our most important source of energy.
Polyethylene is one
of the materials we most frequently come across in our daily lives and
constitutes 40% of total world plastic production. In other words, roughly
half of what we generically call "plastic" objects has been made from
polyethylene. From a chemical point of view, it is a basic plastic
material, i.e.
a semi-finished product used as a raw material by the
transformation industry to create a wide range of finished products, from
the most simple object to the most sophisticated item. At a structural
level, polyethylene is derived from ethylene, which is itself a by-product
of oil refinement. |