Oil Plant No. 6 – Developed New China’s first synthetic styrene-butadiene rubber tire

In 1964, the Ministry of Petroleum assigned the task of developing the synthetic rubber industry to Jinzhou Oil Plant No. 6, and all the workers in the plant readily took on this challenge. There are many types of synthetic rubber. After analyzing the existing technical foundation in the country at that time as well as possible sources of raw materials, we decided to develop general-purpose rubber first—synthetic cis-butadiene rubber. To buy time, several key processes such as monomer preparation, separation and purification, and polymerization are carried out simultaneously, with both small-scale and medium-scale experiments conducted. To ensure that the product is suitable for tires, we decided to move from polymerization tests to mileage tests using polybutylene raw rubber.

In early 1965, our factory learned that institutions such as the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences had conducted laboratory-scale research on butadiene polymerization. The factory’s management immediately mobilized technical resources to work together on this project and prepare for experiments. In the 1960s, the process for synthesizing cis-butadiene rubber was still a relatively new technology; stereospecific polymerization using Ziegler-Natta catalysts was a field that had only been developed abroad in the 1950s, and it was entirely new to our plant, which specialized in coal-based oil refining. It takes time to gain an understanding of the synthesis of advanced catalysts such as aluminum alkyls as well as the polymerization processes, and mastering these operations was somewhat difficult at that time. This catalyst is characterized by catching fire in contact with air and exploding upon contact with water, posing a safety threat; moreover, the required proportions of its components must be very precise, which demands that the analysis and measurement processes be highly accurate. With the strong cooperation and assistance of the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, our factory’s staff worked hard to learn as much as possible, and quickly set up equipment for small-batch polymerization tests and catalyst synthesis, mastering the basic operations involved. At the same time, it was decided that a medium-sized polymerization testing setup with a 250-liter reactor would be designed by the Beijing Design Institute and installed by the first half of 1965, in order to adjust the process conditions and provide raw rubber materials for prototype tires. As required, our factory obtained 50 kilograms of gelatinous material in July 1965. After completing all technical preparations regarding design, construction, and operation, we began testing cobalt-based catalysts to produce a batch of cobalt gel; subsequently, we used nickel-based catalysts to trial-produce nickel gel, which has since been manufactured as a regular product to this day.

The first styrene-butadiene rubber produced after the founding of New China