Another look at the “Great Leap Forward” of the polyformaldehyde industry”

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author: Source of Zhang Xinggang’s article: China Chemical Industry News At present, my country's polyformaldehyde production capacity has reached 400,000 tons. * * exceeds demand. The picture shows a polyformaldehyde product produced by a domestic company. Sinochem News On May 12 this year, under the title "Beware of Polyformaldehyde's "Great Leap Forward"", this newspaper reported on the rapid launch of domestic polyformaldehyde projects and reminded companies to prevent excess. However, in the second half of this year, companies have begun to launch polyformaldehyde projects on a large scale. In early June, Line C of CNOOC Amano Chemical Co., Ltd.’s 60,000 tons/year polyformaldehyde plant was put into operation. On August 3, Shandong Zibo High-tech Zone signed a contract with Shandong Baoli Polymer New Materials Co., Ltd. to build a polyformaldehyde project with an annual output of 25,000 tons. On September 15, Tongmei Group officially started laying the foundation for its annual production of 240,000 tons of polyformaldehyde project. The group said that after the project is completed, the company will become the polyformaldehyde production base with the largest production capacity in the world. On September 25, the 60,000 tons/year polyformaldehyde plant of Shenhua Ningxia Coal Group was put into operation. According to industry insiders, the development of the polyformaldehyde industry this year is characterized by many construction projects and many projects put into production. In just over a year, domestic polyformaldehyde production capacity has grown from 100,000 tons last year to the current 400,000 tons, an increase of three times. Industry insiders have pointed out that 2011 is a great development year for China's polyformaldehyde. It is understood that during the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" period, there are many companies in various places planning to launch this project. Faced with the boom in polyformaldehyde projects in various places, more people in the industry have expressed deep concerns. Although the domestic production capacity of polyformaldehyde is large and there are many projects, the products produced by enterprises are all mass-produced goods. This is recognized as one of the crux of the domestic polyformaldehyde industry. “Some domestic companies do not fully understand the polyacetal product. They only know that it is a new material and start blindly. However, at present, polyformaldehyde is produced as ordinary products and must be modified, otherwise it will be in surplus like methanol, the raw material for its production. ”Han Qiu, deputy general manager of Inner Mongolia CNOOC Tianye Chemical Group Company, told reporters this way. According to Han Qiu, although polyoxymethylene is an engineering plastic with good comprehensive properties, it also has shortcomings such as low impact toughness, poor heat resistance, and large friction coefficient. This greatly limits the application of polyoxymethylene in various fields. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the heat resistance, rigidity, fatigue resistance, creep resistance and mechanical properties of polyoxymethylene through modification. If polyformaldehyde is modified, it can be produced in dozens of series and hundreds of varieties, and the added value of the product is very high. At present, ordinary grades of polyformaldehyde products are sold for about 10,000 yuan/ton per ton, but after modification, the value of most products can be increased by 3 to 4 times. Some modified polyformaldehyde is used in the aerospace field, which can increase the value by more than 30 times, and the price is as high as 300,000 yuan/ton. In Jiangsu and Zhejiang, some plastic processing companies can make very high profits just by adding some colors to polyformaldehyde. With the successive launch of domestic polyformaldehyde projects, domestic ordinary brand products have experienced overcapacity and low-price competition. Modification has become an effective way to increase the added value of polyformaldehyde. But it is a pity that at present, domestic polyformaldehyde companies mainly produce general products, and there are not many modified products. Why is it difficult to open up the road to modification of domestic polyformaldehyde products? The application market is not fully open. A senior engineer from Shanghai Blue Star Polyformaldehyde Co., Ltd. told reporters that the most commonly used polyformaldehyde products on the market are ordinary polyformaldehyde products, and modified products account for a small proportion of the total market. Modification is to increase the added value of the market, but the modification is particularly targeted. For example, although they are both polyacetal products, automobile steering wheel components and door lock components are very different. This requires companies to go deep into the market to find more application markets for polyacetal, and the market can gradually expand. He said that whether it is a manufacturer or an application manufacturer, if it does not have an in-depth understanding of the characteristics of polyoxymethylene and its application fields, it will not dare to rashly choose new modified products. If there are parts that can be made of modified materials or other products, designers will definitely give priority to the materials that have been used before using new products. Zheng Baoshan, deputy director of the Petrochemical Division of the Petroleum and Chemical Industry Planning Institute, also believes that the current domestic application of new materials is the opposite. * Use whatever you are used to. For example, if it is applied to cars, various car manufacturers have already formed applications. * It is customary to change a material, molds and other supporting facilities must also be changed. If the price gap is not very large, manufacturers will not change easily, so the application of polyformaldehyde modified products is more difficult. Businesses operate in silos. Rui Shengbo, deputy chief engineer of Yankuang Group's Lunan Fertilizer Plant, told reporters that for polyformaldehyde modification, different scientific research institutes and polyformaldehyde production companies have different research directions. Everyone is investing in adding hardware and conducting research on modified formulas. However, companies keep each other's secrets secret, and there are problems of repeated investment, repeated research, and repeated modifications. Han Qiu said that this is also the case with the Ministry of Chemical Industry. * * A common problem caused by the cancellation of professional departments. The lack of a unified organization for product and technology research has affected technological progress and caused the industry to take many detours. In this regard, industry insiders pointed out that the modification of polyformaldehyde manufacturers is far away from market application, and there is still some way to go in the future. Only by cooperating with application customers can we speed up the modification process. It is understood that some domestic companies have already started to practice this. For example, Yuntianhua's polyformaldehyde production project in Chongqing invested 120 million yuan in a 10,000-ton/year modified engineering plastics project and a 15 million square meter/year high-performance microporous separator R&D project in cooperation with scientific research institutes and customers. Kaifeng Longyu Chemical Co., Ltd. regards the development of modified polyformaldehyde products as an extension of the industrial chain. It has established an industry-university-research consortium with 13 well-known domestic universities and scientific research institutes to develop flame retardant, antistatic and automotive-specific products. 80% of the equipment is imported. At present, most of the polyformaldehyde devices launched in China use imported second-hand technology. This is recognized as another crux of the domestic polyformaldehyde industry. Han Qiu told reporters that the polyformaldehyde project currently launched in my country does not yet have a set of domestically produced equipment, and the equipment is imported from front to back. Rui Shengbo further introduced to reporters that a single polyformaldehyde production line requires an equipment investment of more than 400 million yuan. Generally, imported equipment accounts for more than 300 million yuan. The main equipment, such as parformaldehyde reactor, heat exchanger, granulation screw, reaction screw machine, etc., are all imported. In addition, some process technology service companies not only charge high technology transfer fees, but also need to purchase major equipment. Some have also signed exclusive agreements with Japanese screw manufacturers, resulting in very high equipment investment. According to Rui Shengbo, the largest glass-lined reactor currently manufactured in China is 70 cubic meters, which cannot meet domestic polyformaldehyde production needs. Moreover, the larger the volume of the reaction kettle, the easier it is to deform after spraying glaze, and the support strength will decrease. Therefore, the 90 cubic meter glass-lined reactors used by domestic enterprises are all imported. At present, my country's polyformaldehyde production mainly uses our country's * * Fuyi International Engineering Co., Ltd., as well as Polish and Korean craftsmanship. The synthesis reactor equipped with Polish technology is made of glass-lined material. * * Fuyi Company's process uses zirconium-lined materials, and the Korean process synthesis reactor uses glass-lined or zirconium-lined materials. Most of the equipment is imported, which makes domestic polyformaldehyde investment high and competitiveness difficult to improve. In this regard, industry insiders pointed out that it is necessary to rely on localization of equipment to reduce project investment. Rui Shengbo pointed out that the current capacity of a single domestic polyformaldehyde production line is generally 20,000 tons. Foreign equipment leaves little margin for increasing production capacity, and can increase production capacity by 5% at most. In order to scale up the production of polyformaldehyde and reduce costs in the future, it is necessary to increase the capacity of a single production line and expand the volume of the parformaldehyde reactor, which requires accelerating the localization of equipment. It is understood that currently only parformaldehyde reactors and heat exchangers have a certain degree of localization. A technical person in charge of the former Shanghai Solvent Factory who participated in the localization of polyformaldehyde told reporters that the most suitable metal material for the parformaldehyde reactor is zirconium. A single polyformaldehyde production line requires two 90-cubic-meter glass-lined reactors, each costing more than 4 million yuan. ； Only one reactor made of zirconium material is needed, and the price is more than 10 million yuan. The technical person in charge pointed out that although zirconium materials are more expensive than glass lining, if the glass lining is damaged, it will be difficult to handle and may even be scrapped if not careful. However, zirconium materials have advantages due to their high strength. Zirconium materials have been domestically produced as early as 3 years ago. Li Xianjun, deputy director of the Science and Technology Department of Baoti Co., Ltd., which specializes in the production of zirconium materials, told reporters that in fact, zirconium sponge and zirconium oxychloride, the raw materials for foreign production of zirconium materials, are imported from China. At present, the price of zirconium materials in my country has begun to decline, reaching more than 400,000 yuan/ton, a decrease of more than 100,000 yuan/ton from last year. A person in charge of Western Titanium Industry Co., Ltd. told reporters that he is willing to do some work on the localization of polyformaldehyde equipment. The delivery time of domestic zirconium materials is short, only 2 to 3 months. If foreign materials are imported, it will take 8 to 10 months. Moreover, domestic zirconium materials have been successfully used in acetic acid production. Talking about the localization of polyformaldehyde equipment, an industry insider said that the key issues are whether polyformaldehyde manufacturers have the decision-making courage to take risks, whether they will give domestic equipment manufacturers opportunities, and whether they have suitable technical personnel. He pointed out that as long as the first one is made in China, the localization level of polyformaldehyde equipment will be greatly improved. Independent technology has stagnated. Currently, the polyformaldehyde technology used in China still has many imperfections, some of which are even congenital. This is recognized as the third crux of the domestic polyformaldehyde industry. According to the reporter’s understanding, my country’s research and development of polyformaldehyde began in the late 1950s. However, due to the lack of breakthroughs in many core technologies, the level of process technology and equipment production capacity have not made substantial progress in decades. Except for the twin-screw continuous polymerization process and equipment, which was developed during the "Eighth Five-Year Plan" period, to this day, my country's polyformaldehyde production has not made any new progress in improving independent processes. A senior engineer from the former Shanghai Solvent Factory who participated in the localization of polyformaldehyde believes that the problems are concentrated in the following two aspects. Recovery and treatment issues of dilute formaldehyde. Among domestic polyformaldehyde production devices, except for Yuntianhua’s polyformaldehyde device in the water-rich area of ​​Yunnan, which is equipped with the downstream product pentaerythritol, the dilute formaldehyde recovery of other enterprise devices uses a distillation scheme. There are problems such as large recovery volume, high energy consumption, high equipment material requirements, and large investment. Although different manufacturers have different equipment and operating levels, if a company produces 1 ton of polyformaldehyde, when the device is running stably, it will basically consume 10 to 12 tons of steam to process dilute formaldehyde. At present, the solutions used by domestic enterprises to control the amount of dilute formaldehyde are not very effective. Equipment corrosion problems. Currently, in the polyformaldehyde process used in China, the critical process of trimerformaldehyde synthesis catalyst is the core technology. At present, domestic enterprises use concentrated sulfuric acid as the catalyst. However, the concentrated sulfuric acid catalyst corrodes equipment very seriously and is quite difficult to handle, and the catalyst is difficult to recycle. Special corrosion-resistant equipment such as glass-lined reactors, zirconium-lined reactors, and graphite heat exchangers are also required. In this regard, only replacing sulfuric acid from the catalyst is the real process progress and revolution. The advantage of replacing the sulfuric acid catalyst is that the material requirements of the reactor and reaction heat exchanger will be reduced, and the equipment investment will be reduced. In addition, some domestic devices have experienced technical problems after they were put into operation. In order to prevent competitors, the owners are unwilling to allow design institutes to participate in improvements. This resulted in a set of defective technologies being transferred multiple times in China, making it difficult to improve the technology. Experts suggest that domestic polyformaldehyde production companies should strengthen exchanges and communication based on existing problems in device operation to promote technological improvement.