Lately, the project of “Application of Home-made SSBR in Safe, Energy-saving and High-performance Tire Key Technology and Industrialization” carried out by the CNPC Lanzhou Chemical Research Center, CNPC North China Chemical Sale Branch and Sailun Jinyu Group won 2015 Third Prize in Scientific and Technological Progress of China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation.
This project is the precedent in large-scale application of home-made solution polymerized styrene-butadiene rubber (SSBR) in high-performance tire, with the manufactured high-performance tires sold to the developed countries and regions like Europe, America, etc., which has the guiding and demonstration effect in China’s tire manufacturing industry and reaches the international advanced level. This technology has been successfully applied in the enterprises such as Sailun Jinyu Tire Co., Ltd., etc. and provided technical support for large-scale promotion and application of SSBR in high-performance tires, with the accumulated created economic benefit of 642.419 Million Yuan. At present, the SSBR device of Dushanzi Petrochemical is under full production and realizes production achievement and total sales.
Energy conservation, environmental protection and safety are the future development direction of the automobile, and high-performance tire with low rolling resistance, low fuel consumption, abrasion resistance and better wet-skid resistance has become the development trend of current tire industry. Tire labeling laws issued by the developed countries and regions such as Europe, America, etc. put forward the requirements of limit value for rolling resistance, wet-skid resistance, fuel efficiency and rolling noise grade of tire. On March 1, 2014, Technical Specification of Green Tire of China Rubber Industry Association (hereinafter referred to as CRIA) came into effect. At present, China’s tire output accounts for about 1/4 of total output of the world, with the export rate reaching about 40%; however, most of China’s tires belong to the E.U. Standard level E or F. Along with the successive implementation of relevant tire laws and regulations, the upgrading of tire industry is extremely urgent.
SSBR is a preferred material for manufacturing high-performance tires with low rolling resistance, high wet-skid resistance and high abrasion resistance and China’s research on it started from the 1970s; however, its output and capacity are seriously inconsistent, which is because that lack of mature SSBR processing and application technology in China results in failure in large-scale application of domestic SSBR in tire industry. Research shows that the root of this status quo is mainly in two aspects: firstly, completely different from the supporting technology and processing process of emulsion polymerized butadiene styrene rubber (ESBR), the SSBR must adopt silica reinforcement. Although the silica modification technology and silica reinforcement technology have been researched for years, the technical problems such as silica of uneven dispersion, easy aggregation and poor combination with SSBR substrate still can not be resolved effectively and the performance advantages of SSBR can not be embodied, which severely restricts the application of SSBR in tires; secondly, the operating mechanism for production, sales, R&D and application of SSBR is backward and each link is relatively independent, which results in discrepancy between production and market and separation of technical development and application, thus restricting the benign development of SSBR industrial chain.
In view of existing problems and the historical background of China’s SSBR and tire industry, CNPC started to set up the project for it and led to organize the technical research team to carry out aimed work with SSBR processing and application technology as the breakthrough.
The technical team studied the corresponding relationship between domestic SSBR structure and application performance as well as the processing and application characteristics such as vulcanization, reinforcement, etc., and carried out performance contrast with the international like products, with the achieved research results including: (1) silica surface modification technology and low-temperature continuous mixing process, carbon black/silica biphase reinforcement; (2) special processing process and supporting technology for application of SSBR in high-performance tire; (3) low-expansion-coefficient tread rubber formula and gradient temperature variation vulcanization technology; (4) high-performance radial tire manufacturing technology, with production demonstration line of high-performance radial tire established; and (5) built CNPC SSBR technical promotion and service platform with “production, sales, research and application” integrated.
Seen from the technical level, the developed technologies such as silica surface modification, low-temperature continuous mixing process, biphase carbon black reinforcement, SSBR tread formula, high-performance tire manufacturing, etc. break through the technical bottleneck for application of domestic SSBR in high-performance tire and form the high-performance tire manufacturing technology with proprietary intellectual property right. The rolling resistance coefficient of radial tires manufactured by Sailun Jinyu Company with this technology increases from the original level E or F to level C, the wet-skid resistance coefficient increases from the original level E or F to level B, about 23L of fuel consumption can be saved for average mileage of 10000 km, the emission of CO2 is decreased by about 40kg, and the safety performance is largely improved, with the braking distance shortened by over 10%.
This technical result has been applied in many tire enterprises such as Sailun Jinyu, Zhongce Rubber, Sichuan Haida, etc., in which the high-performance tire manufactured by Sailun Jinyu with this technology has successfully entered the high-end markets in Europe and America, with the accumulated produced high-performance tires from 2012 to 2014 exceeding 38.4 million units. Along with the successful application of this technology in Jinyu, its demonstration role constantly becomes prominent to promote the large-scale application of domestic SSBR in tire enterprises.
With the implementation of Technical Specification of Green Tire, the upgrading of domestic tire industry will be further accelerated to provide opportunities for the development of SSBR, thus the market demand will grow rapidly. The successful development of this technology provides solid technical guarantee for technical progress and industrial upgrading of China’s synthetic rubber and tire industry.
Seen from the generated economic benefit and social benefit, the direct economic benefit is obvious: (1) the SSBR sales volume of CNPC North China Chemical Sale Branch with the largest sales volume has a cumulative increase of 28019 tons; calculated at an average ton profit of 1000 Yuan, the cumulative increased economic benefit is 28.019 Million Yuan; (2) Sailun Jinyu Group with the largest consumption has a cumulative production and sales of tire products of 38.40 million units in three years; calculated at an average unit profit of 16 Yuan, the cumulative increased economic benefit is 614.4 Million Yuan. The newly-added economic benefit of SSBR products and tire products is 642.419 Million Yuan in total.
According to information, tire enterprises such as Linglong Tire, South China Tire, Shaanxi Yanchang, etc. successively requested to cooperate with CNPC to develop high-performance tires, and the consumption of domestic SSBR and output and sales of high-performance tires would have new progress.
