Widespread polymers
Plastic packaging - Polymers used

The crude oil refining flowchart (Figure1) shows that during steam cracking, naphtha from atmospheric distillation and heavy products from vacuum distillation are used to ultimately produce:

• ethylene, a monomer of polyethylene;

• propylene, a monomer of polypropylene;

• benzene, a monomer of polystyrene.

These three materials are by far the most widely used in the packaging industry.

The table at1 complements this diagram by showing that, regardless of the origin of the raw materials (coal, gas, oil), the process goes through the "major intermediates" stage to arrive at the finished products used by converters: textiles, monofilament, film and sheet extrusion, injection blow molding...