Bromobutyl rubber is used in almost all car tires. In addition, it is also indispensable in bottle stoppers and hoses of medical equipment. Its highest selling price once reached 150,000 yuan per ton, and the current price is around 55,000 yuan per ton.
Do you still remember the past? Bicycle tires need to be inflated every two or three days. Think again about your current car, which only gets pumped up once every three months to six months. In the memory of tires, inner tubes are indispensable, but now 100% of cars have no inner tubes, and half of trucks have no inner tubes. In the past, tires were punctured and deflated immediately, but now they can still run for 10 kilometers - all these changes are due to the magic of bromobutyl rubber.
On the inner wall of a car tire, there is a layer of bromobutyl rubber, which acts like a tire stopper. Because it is an airtight substance that can block the air in the tire.
For so many years, humans have not been able to find a substitute for bromobutyl rubber when making tires. If they want to make a completely domestic tire, they have to make China's own bromobutyl rubber.
The Chemical New Materials Branch of the Chinese Chemical Society and the Zhejiang Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association jointly announced a piece of good news yesterday: After suffering from 66 years of monopoly by the United States and Germany, the world's most expensive artificial rubber - bromobutyl The Chinese can also make rubber themselves.
It is Professor Chen Gantang of Zhejiang University and his student Yu Zuxun, as well as Hangzhou Longshan Chemical Co., Ltd. and Zhejiang Qicheng Technology Co., Ltd. who have worked hard for 10 years to break the Western monopoly.
Recently, the first batch of 200 kilograms of products was delivered to Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co., Ltd., which was used on all-steel radial tires. These tires were subjected to indoor simulation experiments and experienced 100,000 kilometers of durable high-speed operation. The results Yes, the main indicators of tires are equivalent to imported products.
This means that every raw material used in automobile tires can be produced domestically.
There is no way to buy technology with US$100 million
Bromobutyl rubber technology has always been in the hands of two Fortune 500 companies: Exxon in the United States and Bayer in Germany. The Chinese want to buy technology, and the price once reached US$100 million, but they were unmoved.
For so many years, the two companies have not even applied for patents, for fear that the patents would reveal the secrets of their core technologies. They don’t use patents to protect their product’s market monopoly, they just know that China cannot produce bromobutyl rubber.
Having controlled bromobutyl rubber for 66 years, the United States and Germany have made countless real money from it. The cost of making a ton of bromobutyl rubber is less than 20,000 yuan, and selling it to China costs at least 50,000 yuan, with a profit of more than 100 yuan.
Two years ago, China's tire companies experienced severe pain.
The supply power is in the hands of others, and they can sell it at whatever price they want. On the pretext of rising raw material prices, the price of bromobutyl rubber has risen sharply. At its highest point, it has more than doubled. This move cost the lives of many Chinese tire companies.
This is not the most worrying thing. The New Materials Branch of the Chinese Chemical Society said that China is now the world's largest automobile producer and seller, with 14 million new cars built every year. Just imagine, if it is at odds with Western countries , once the supply of bromobutyl rubber is stopped, won't China's huge automobile industry be paralyzed, which will affect the jobs of tens of millions of people. How many cars on the road have to lie down without tires to change?
Why was the monopoly broken by Zhejiang people?
The most powerful central chemical enterprise is not in Zhejiang, and the most powerful chemical research institute is not in Zhejiang. Why was the monopoly finally broken by Zhejiang people?
Chen Gantang, who is nearly eighty years old, found a way to synthesize bromobutyl rubber in the laboratory. However, being able to make 1 kilogram of rubber does not mean that the same method can be used to make 1 ton. 10 tons, or even 10,000 tons of rubber. In the chemical industry, only 30 successful technologies in the laboratory can eventually be produced on a large scale.
If R&D continues, it will be beyond the reach of a university professor. It will require large factories, huge production lines, a huge technical team and a lot of money.
Zhejiang Qicheng Technology Co., Ltd. is very interested in high technology. Hangzhou Longshan Chemical Co., Ltd. understands the market, has factories, equipment, and a large number of technical backbones. The marriage of technology, equipment, capital, scholars and enterprises, and the new innovation model finally made Zhejiang people a blockbuster.
But the road to breaking the 66-year monopoly will not be smooth sailing. There were not hundreds of setbacks and failures, but dozens of them.
Breaking the monopoly has been Professor Chen’s long-cherished wish for decades, and he will never give up; Fan Wenlong, chairman of Qicheng Company, is also an unusual entrepreneur. He is a travel enthusiast and loves outdoor adventures. In 2007 , he and five companions climbed Mount Everest. He said that if you can risk your life to realize your dream, why be afraid of investment failure and wasting tens of millions of dollars?
Today, China needs 250,000 tons of bromobutyl rubber a year, at a cost of 55,000 yuan per ton, and nearly 14 billion yuan is spent on foreigners a year. As more and more Chinese people realize their car dreams, the import volume of this kind of rubber will increase by 15-20% every year. Calculated this way, in five years, China will need to spend more than 30 billion yuan every year to buy bromobutyl rubber.
The research and development of bromobutyl rubber seems to be a road to wealth: the total research and development expenses are about 20 million yuan, and the two companies plan to build a production line with an annual output of 10,000 tons, and will invest another 200 million yuan. Yuan. 10,000 tons of rubber, even if sold at a low price, can be worth at least 400 million yuan, with a profit of more than 200 million yuan - which means that after investing more than 200 million yuan in the early stage, it only takes one year to recover the capital.
Of course, the output of 10,000 tons is only in the early stage. After the production capacity is expanded, the market pie occupied by Western companies will be taken back, and the net profit will be more than 10 billion yuan a year.
An ordinary car tire sells for 350 yuan, of which bromobutyl rubber accounts for 1/6 of the cost. After localization, rubber becomes cheaper, and tire price reductions are inevitable.
The price drop is not the key yet. In order to save costs, some tire factories do not use or use less bromobutyl rubber, making cheap and inferior tires to hit the market. Once bromobutyl rubber becomes cheaper, inferior tires may become extinct, and driving a car will be less of a big trap.
Has it been put into production? .
Zhejiang Online Hangzhou News on November 26 (Correspondent Li Jianyuan) Domestic industrialized bromobutyl rubber production technology with completely independent property rights has made a breakthrough in Hangzhou. After testing by an authoritative organization, the trial production samples have major The technical indicators are equivalent to the quality of similar imported products. This means that after the United States and Germany, China will become the third country in the world to independently master bromobutyl rubber production technology.
With the development of high-speed, heavy-duty automobiles, radial tires, and tubeless tires, bromobutyl rubber is an irreplaceable raw material for making tubeless tires and a necessary raw material for medical rubber products. , is an important strategic material for the country. With the rapid development of the automobile industry and the pharmaceutical industry, the demand is increasing at a rate of 15% to 20% every year.
This technology is completed on the basis of the chlorinated butyl rubber production technology developed by Professor Chen Gantang of Zhejiang University and the small trial of bromobutyl rubber. Currently, this technology has applied for two national invention patents.
It is reported that last year, Hangzhou Longshan Chemical Co., Ltd. and Zhejiang Qicheng Technology Co., Ltd. and Professor Chen et al. established a bromobutyl rubber pilot group. Under the guidance of the research group, they jointly established a bromobutyl rubber pilot group in Hangzhou Longshan Chemical Co., Ltd. Invested in the construction of a bromobutyl rubber pilot plant with an annual output of 1,000 tons, and started the trial production of the first sample on October 6 last year. In the first stage of the pilot plant, the plant has completed the trial production of 60 batches , after overcoming and solving many technical problems, product quality has become relatively stable.
In the second phase of the pilot test, the research team will further improve the existing design facilities, break through the bottleneck restricting production capacity, and build a computer-controlled continuous production line with an annual output of 3,000 tons of bromide butyl. Rubber equipment, providing design data for equipment expanded to 10,000 tons.