Patent ID: 8124820

Claim:
A process for producing polyolefins, which process comprises dimerizing a feedstock comprising an n-olefin or a mixture of n-olefins in the presence of a solid acidic catalyst by passing the feedstock to a catalytic distillation apparatus comprising either a) a combination of a distillation column and a reactor comprising at least one catalyst bed, or b) a distillation column connected to one or more side reactors comprising at least one catalyst layer, recovering the unreacted n-olefin at the upper part of the distillation column or at the upper part of the combination of the distillation column and the reactor as a side stream to be combined with the feedstock wherein from 50 to 95% by weight of n-olefin monomers from said feedstock contact the catalyst layer more than once, and hydrogenating the reaction product from the dimerization, wherein the catalyst layer comprises solid acidic catalyst material with a mesoporous surface area of more than 100 m 2 /g, an aluminium content between 0.2 and 30% by weight, the amount of the acid sites of the material ranging between 50 and 500 μmol/g, and the material being selected from the group consisting of acidic amorphous aluminium silicates and mesoporous molecular sieves imbedded with zeolite.