Remember the old days? Bicycle tires needed to be pumped up every two or three days. Then think about your car today, three months to six months only once pumped. Remember the tires, the inner tube is indispensable thing, but now 100 percent of the car is no inner tube, half of the truck is also no inner tube. In the past, tires were punctured, immediately deflated, and now can run up to 10 kilometers - all this change, all rely on the magic of bromobutyl rubber.
In the inner wall of the car tire, there is a layer of bromobutyl rubber, which acts like a tire cork. Because it's an airtight substance, it deadens the air in the tire.
So many years, making tires, mankind has not been able to find alternatives to bromobutyl rubber, want to build a all domestic tires, have to make China's own bromobutyl rubber to.
Chemical Society of China Chemical Industry New Materials Branch, Zhejiang Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association yesterday jointly released a good news: suffered the United States, Germany's monopoly for 66 years, the world's most expensive synthetic rubber - bromobutyl rubber, the Chinese people can also make their own.
The 10 years of painstaking research to break the Western monopoly, is a professor at Zhejiang University, Chen Gantang and his students Yu Zuxun, and Hangzhou Longshan Chemical Co.
Recently, the first 200 kilograms of the product was sent to Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co., Ltd. and used in all-steel radial tires, which were simulated indoors and underwent 100,000 kilometers of durable high-speed operation, and the result was that the tire's main indexes were comparable to those of imported products.
This means that every raw material on the car tires have been able to domestic.
100 million U.S. dollars to buy technology are no door
Bromobutyl rubber technology has been in the hands of two of the world's top 500 companies: the U.S. Exxon and Germany's Bayer. When the Chinese wanted to buy the technology, they offered up to 100 million U.S. dollars, but they were not moved.
For so many years, the two companies did not even apply for patents, fearing that the patents would reveal the secrets of their core technologies. They do not use patents to protect the market monopoly of their products, that is, they ate, the Chinese people can not make bromobutyl rubber.
The control of bromobutyl rubber 66 years, the United States and Germany from which I do not know how much real money. To make a ton of bromobutyl rubber, the cost is less than 20,000 yuan, sold to China, at least 50,000 yuan, more than 100% profit.
Two years ago, China's tire companies have experienced severe pain.
Supply control in the hands of others, people want to sell what price to sell what price, under the pretext of raw material prices, bromobutyl rubber prices rose steeply to the highest point, up more than two times, this move, to a lot of China's tire business life.
This is not the most worrying, the Chinese Chemical Industry Association, said the new materials branch, China is now the world's largest automobile producer and seller, 14 million new cars made each year, imagine, if it is with the West, once they stopped supplying bromobutyl rubber, China's huge automotive industry is not to be paralyzed, which relates to the tens of millions of people's rice bowls. Road running car, no tires can be changed, how many to lie down?
Why the monopoly will be broken by the Zhejiang
The strength of the most powerful chemical central enterprises are not in Zhejiang, chemical research strength of the strongest institutions are not in Zhejiang, why the monopoly was eventually broken by the Zhejiang people?
Chen Gantang, nearly 80 years old, found the synthesis of bromobutyl rubber in the laboratory method, however, can create 1 kg of rubber, does not mean that the same method can be used to create 1 ton, 10 tons, or even 10,000 tons of rubber. In the chemical industry, only 30 percent of successful technologies in the lab end up in mass production.
The research and development continues to go on, it is not a university professor's strength, it requires a large plant, a huge production line, a huge technical team and a lot of money.
Zhejiang Qicheng Technology Co., Ltd. is very interested in high-tech, Hangzhou Longshan Chemical Co., Ltd. understands the market, plant, equipment, and a large number of technical backbone. Technology + equipment + capital, the marriage of scholars and enterprises, the new innovation model allows the Zhejiang final hit.
But the road to breaking the 66-year monopoly could not be smooth. The setbacks and failures in between were not hundreds, but many dozens.
Breaking the monopoly is Professor Chen's long-cherished dream for decades, and he will never give up; Fan Wenlong, chairman of Qicheng, is also an unusual entrepreneur, a donkey enthusiast who loves outdoor adventures, and in 2007 he climbed Mount Everest with five companions. He said, in order to realize the dream, can take life to risk, why fear investment failure, waste tens of millions of dollars?
Today's China, a year need 250,000 tons of bromobutyl rubber, a ton of 55,000 yuan, a year smashed to the foreigners of the RMB nearly 14 billion yuan. Accompanied by more and more Chinese people round the car dream, this rubber imports to climb 15% -20% per year. This calculation, five years later, China needs to pay more than 30 billion yuan a year to buy bromobutyl rubber.
Research and development of bromobutyl rubber, seems to be a road to riches: the total research and development costs of about 20 million yuan, the two companies plan to build a production line with an annual output of 10,000 tons, but also invested 200 million yuan. 10,000 tons of rubber, even if it is cheap to sell, at least can be worth 400 million yuan, profit of more than 200 million - which means that, in the early stages of smashing into the More than two hundred million dollars, only one year will be able to return to the capital.
Of course, 10,000 tons of production is only at the initial stage, after the expansion of production capacity, to grab back the market cake occupied by Western enterprises, a year of net profit of more than 10 billion yuan.
An ordinary car tire sells for 350 yuan, of which the cost of bromobutyl rubber accounted for 1/6, after the localization of rubber is cheaper, tire price reduction is inevitable.
The price drop is not the key. There are tire factory to save costs, do not use or less use of bromobutyl rubber, make cheap low-quality tires to hit the market, once the bromobutyl rubber is cheap, low-quality tires may be able to extinct, driving a car will be less of a big trap.
Commissioned?
Zhejiang Online Hangzhou, November 26 (correspondent Li Jianyuan) domestic industrialized bromobutyl rubber production technology with fully independent property rights before the breakthrough in Hangzhou, tested by authoritative institutions, test production of samples of the main technical indicators and the quality of imported similar products. This means that after the United States, Germany, China will become the world's third independent master of the bromobutyl rubber production technology countries.
With the high-speed, heavy-duty automobiles, car tires, radial tires, tubeless tires direction, bromobutyl rubber is the manufacture of tubeless tires irreplaceable raw materials, but also medical rubber products must be raw materials, is an important national strategic materials, with the automotive industry and the rapid development of the pharmaceutical industry, the demand for an annual increase of 15-20% of the rate of incremental growth.
The technology is developed in Zhejiang University, Professor Chen Gantang chlorinated butyl rubber production technology and bromobutyl rubber on the basis of a small test completed. At present, the technology has applied for two national invention patents.
It is reported that last year, Hangzhou Longshan Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. and Zhejiang Qicheng Technology Co., Ltd. and Professor Chen set up a pilot group of bromobutyl rubber, under the guidance of the subject group jointly invested in Hangzhou Longshan Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. invested in the construction of an annual output of 1,000 tons of bromobutyl rubber pilot plant, and last year, October 6, began the first sample of the trial, the first phase of the trial of this device In the first phase of the trial, the device has completed 60 batches of trial production, after overcoming and solving many technical difficulties, product quality has been relatively stable.
In the second phase of the pilot, the team will further improve the existing design package, break through the bottleneck restricting production capacity, to build a computer-controlled continuous production of 3,000 tons of bromobutyl rubber device, to expand to 10,000 tons of devices to provide design data.