Patent ID: 8653206

Claim:
A process to manufacture a differentiated and/or non-differentiated olefin polymer comprising the steps of: (a) providing at least one olefin for continuous polymerization in a first reactor in the presence of a diluent, hydrogen and a catalyst in order to produce a slurry effluent comprising the diluent and solid particles of a first olefin polymer; (b) introducing all of the slurry effluent from the first reactor comprising a suspension of particles of the first olefin polymer to a light gas removal system, wherein the light gas removal system consists of a flash vessel and a fractionation column with an overhead condenser that is directly connected to the vapor side of the flash vessel, wherein the overhead light gas vapors that are essentially free of polymer fines are produced in the overhead condenser, and wherein a slurry consisting of a suspension of particles of first olefin polymer that is free of light impurities is collected in the bottom of the flash vessel; (c) recovering the polymer-free overhead vapors without additional filtration from the light gas removal system and sending part of said recovered vapors to an analytical device capable of measuring light gas concentrations, where the recovered vapor is sent to an in-line gas chromatograph analyzer where at least one of the reaction components has a concentration that is measured and said reaction component has a feed flow to the first polymerization reactor that is adjusted based on the concentration measured; (d) adjusting the levels of hydrogen and olefin being provided to the first reactor based on the measured light gas concentrations so as to maintain the desired properties of the first olefin polymer; (e) pumping part of the suspension of particles of the first olefin polymer slurry collected in step (b) to a second polymerization reactor zone where at least one second olefin is polymerized in order to form a second olefin polymer and to produce a second olefin polymer suspension comprising diluent and particles of an olefin polymer composition comprising both the first olefin polymer and the second olefin polymer; and (f) withdrawing an olefin polymer suspension containing a differentiated or non-differentiated olefin polymer composition from the second polymerization reactor.