◎ Yang Honghui

Xu Chunhua expressed that since its founding in 2001, China Rubber Industry Association Rubber Chemicals Specialized Committee had always insisted that: green chemical was an eternal theme of rubber chemicals industry; cleaner production led China’s rubber chemicals to the world; expand the production capacity and realize serving global rubber industry. During the “13th Five-year Plan”, China’s rubber chemicals industry insisted on being innovation-driven and has entered the new phase of greening, intellectualization and micro-chemicalization.

According to the information, with its proportion in global output from 10% in 2001 to over 76% at present, China’s rubber chemicals possesses absolute right of speech in the world and realizes significant breakthrough in cleaner production technology; through technical innovation and promotion of cleaner production technology, it has realized reduction of energy consumption per ton by 30% and product greening rate reaching over 92%. In addition, the industrial concentration of top 10 large-scale enterprises reaches 70%~80%. In 2017, under the impact of domestic environmental protection tide, China’s rubber chemicals industry stood the severe test and basically guaranteed stable supply of rubber chemicals at home and abroad.

Xu Chunhua proposed that the development ideas of rubber chemicals industry in “14th Five-year Plan” shall start from the following aspects:

Firstly, further develop the new products replacing the poisonous and harmful rubber chemicals, which mainly include substitutes of resorcinol and formaldehyde compound, substitutes of the products such as DTDM, thiuram accelerator, dithiocar-bamate and pentachlorothiophenol; the development and application of vulcanizing activator with low dosage of zinc oxide and eco-friendly aromatic hydrocarbon oil.

Resorcinol and formaldehyde compound are mainly used for the impregnant bonding the cord fabric and the rubber as well as resin product bonding the rubber material with the rubber in the formula, with a total annual demand of about over 200000 tons. In 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology listed this project into the catalog of poisonous and harmful substances and intensified the development of the substitutes. At present, some companies such as Puyang Willing New Material have made some achievements and the large-scale promotion of WL-PU80 product needs to be realized.

Zinc oxide is a traditional vulcanizing activator in rubber industry, however, the EU REACH Regulation has listed it as a phase-out product. The annual demand of China’s rubber industry for zinc oxide is about 300000 tons, which is in urgent need of constant substitution and volume reduction. Tianjin Kemai Chemical and Changzhou University have started to develop the vulcanizing activator with low dosage of zinc, however, its promotion and application still need to be further promoted, and there is still a large amount of work to do for organizing the upstream and downstream to carry out joint tackling.

Aromatic hydrocarbon oil has a good compatibility with the rubber and has an annual demand of about 250000 tons, however, with high-concentration cancerogenic substance (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAH), aromatic hydrocarbon oil belongs to the obsolete substances designated by REACH Regulation.

There are enterprises in China developing naphthenic oil as a substitute, however, it has high cost and performance which can not satisfy the enterprise demand, a majority of tire enterprises still import overseas products, therefore, the development of aromatic hydrocarbon oil with low content of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon needs joint tackling of the oil refineries, rubber chemicals production enterprises and tire enterprises.

Secondly, development and industrial promotion of key technologies of continuity, micro-chemicalization and intellectualization

Although the output and quality of China’s rubber chemicals have basically satisfied the demand, most of the process technology is still in the batch production phase, with high safety loophole, high emission of “three wastes” and low efficiency. Micro reaction channel technology is a subversive reform of production process of rubber chemicals, which makes production of rubber chemicals enter a green chemical phase with high efficiency, environmental protection and energy conservation in an all-around way.

At present, China’s rubber chemicals industry has achieved significant breakthrough in the aspect of micro-chemical continuous flow innovation, there have been 7 sets of micro reaction industrial devices including 5000 tons of accelerant TBzTD/year, 22000 tons of accelerant MBT/year, 12000 tons of accelerant MBTS/year of Willing New Materials Technology Co., Ltd., ten thousand tons of anti-aging agent TMQ of Shandong Stair Chemical & Technology Co., Ltd., ten thousand tons of accelerants CBS and TBBS of Kemai Chemical Co., Ltd. and 2000 tons of scorch retarder CTP/year of Tangyin Yongxin Chemical Co., Ltd., which improve the substantial development ability and international competitiveness of the industry in an all-around way.

During the “14th Five-year Plan”, the focus of process development shall gradually realize “micro as much as possible” and make “table reactor”. Meanwhile, the realization of the vision of automation, digitalization, visualization, modeling and integration shall be accelerated.

Thirdly, enhance governance of “three wastes”, realize circular economy and build clean factory.

The main exhaust gas of rubber chemicals is hydrogen sulfide gas; the waste water has high content of COD and large emission of COD, for example, the waste water generated by each ton of accelerant M product in general process reaches over 20 tons; the solid waste and resin at production terminal have complex composition and high treatment difficulty. In recent years, restrained by the new environmental protection law, the environmental protection input of rubber chemicals enterprises reaches over 2000 Yuan/ton of products. The tasks such as realizing cleaner production in an all-around way, realizing zero emission, improving the comprehensive utilization rate of water resources, recycling of solid wastes, elimination of odor and building clean factory are still arduous. The target of the “14th Five-year Plan” is to build about 10 large-scale rubber chemicals enterprises with an annual sale of over 800 Million into clean factory to ensure green and safe production of large-scale enterprises.

Fourthly, realize transformation and upgrading of the enterprises to ensure stable global supply chain and firmly establish the leading position of China’s rubber chemicals in the world.