【Ten Years of Rapid Development in Chemical Equipment】2165–2022: Breaking Monopolies! Zhenhai 3,000-ton high-regularity polybutylene-1 industrial demonstration plant

Thread Content

Let’s give praise and encouragement to the achievements made in China’s chemical engineering technology and equipment; your participation in discussions is the greatest encouragement. **********************【Ten Years of Great Progress in Chemical Engineering Equipment】Regular updates and summaries are available; feel free to join the discussions: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3576046-1-1.html ***************** Industrial demonstration plant for producing 3,000 tons per year of high-regularity polybutylene-1: In February 2022, good news came from the Zhenhai Innovation Platform – Sinopec Ningbo New Materials Research Institute: the industrial demonstration plant designed to produce 3,000 tons per year of high-regularity polybutylene-1, developed with the help of this institute, was successfully put into operation and began producing qualified products; so far, nearly 100 tons of such products have been manufactured. This marks a significant advancement by Sinopec Ningbo New Materials Research Institute in the field of high-end synthetic new materials, filling a technical gap in China. Polybutene-1 products, known as the \"gold of plastics,\" mainly fall into two categories: homopolymers and random copolymers. Among them, highly stereoregular polybutene-1 homopolymers exhibit excellent properties in terms of creep resistance, resistance to environmental stress cracking, and impact strength, which are superior to those of polyethylene; hence they are very suitable for use in pipes such as water supply pipes, hot water pipes, industrial pipes, and pipes used in buildings. Polybutene-1 random copolymers, on the other hand, possess excellent tearability and are suitable for producing film products; they are currently being used in fields such as food and hygiene product packaging. To overcome the technical and product barriers in this field, since its establishment, Sinopec Ningbo New Materials Research Institute has made the polybutene-1 project a key part of its initial development plans. It has worked together with institutions such as Sinopec Beijing Research Institute of Chemical Technology to promote the implementation of the polybutene-1 technology at Zhenhai Refining & Chemical Complex. The installation was completed by CCCC on September 23, 2021. After numerous optimizations of the production process as well as various tests, it entered the stage of actual trial production just before this year’s Spring Festival, and successful operation was achieved recently. Lin Huajie, deputy director of the Ningbo New Materials Research Institute, said that due to the lack of existing experience to draw on, problems arose one after another after the installation began operation. Various technical challenges were encountered, including the difficulty in treating polyolefin solutions and the narrow operational range for the processing processes; in some cases, these were even the first attempts at industrialization on a global scale. “In situations where certain processes lacked data support, we explored, tested, and strived to overcome the challenges, successfully tackling each one of them. ” It is reported that this facility is the first domestic plant of a thousand-ton scale for the production of high-regular polybutylene-1. As a result, Sinopec Zhenhai Refining & Chemical Co., Ltd. has become the fourth company in the world and the only one in China capable of producing polybutylene-1 on a continuous and stable basis, thereby breaking the long-standing foreign monopoly over high-performance polybutylene-1 technology and products. Cao Jingyang, the person in charge of process technology at Zhenhai Refining & Chemical’s Synthetic Materials Department, said that the plant is currently operating steadily, with all key process parameters within normal ranges, and the product quality meets the expected standards.