Silicone: Depend on independent innovation to develop and grow!


Since the founding of New China 70 years ago, China's silicone industry has gone through 68 spring and autumn years. At present, China's silicone production capacity reaches 3 million tons per year, ranking first in the world, and has successively broken through foreign technology monopoly.


Over the past 68 years, with the efforts of several generations, the silicone industry has become one of the few industries in the domestic chemical industry that truly rely on independent innovation and have independent intellectual property rights. It has made remarkable achievements both in technology and in scale, and has become an indispensable part of the world silicone industry. The important power of neglect.


The research and industrialization of silicone industry in China originated in the early 1950s. In 1951, Yang Donglin, a researcher of Beijing Chemical Engineering Laboratory, Ministry of Heavy Industry, used Grignard method to synthesize organosilicon monomers and produce silicone resin, which pioneered the research of organosilicon industry and application in China.


In 1957, Shenyang Research Institute of Chemical Industry built an intermediate test workshop for organosilicon, and carried out direct stirred bed synthesis of methyl chlorosilane and Grignard method synthesis of phenyl chlorosilane, and trial-produced organosilicon polymer. In 1958, at the on-site meeting held by the then State Science and Technology Commission and the Ministry of Chemical Industry, a complete set of technical data and drawings of the workshop were provided to relevant units throughout the country for promotion. So far, China's silicone industry has begun the first round of industrialization process. In the same year, Shanghai Resin Factory built a production plant for direct synthesis of methyl chlorosilane, and successively produced silicone resin, silicone oil and silicone rubber products.


But until the end of 1970s, China's silicone industry has been in its infancy. Polymer production capacity is only tens to hundreds of tons. Silicone products are expensive. They are mainly used in military industry or in some special industries. The implementation of the reform and opening-up policy has made the world's manufacturing industry shift to China, promoted the wide application of organosilicon products in China, and brought the spring of development to the organosilicon material industry.


In the 1980s, 16 units, including Jiangxi Starfire Chemical Plant, Shanghai Resin Plant, Jinan Petrochemical Plant, Bengbu Silicone Plant, Zhejiang Kaihua Silicone Plant, Jilin Chemical Company Calcium Carbide Plant and Sichuan Natural Gas Plant, successively built production units of methyl monomers, with a total capacity of about 120,000 tons per year. However, the supply of methyl monomers in China is still seriously inadequate.


Over the past decade, other industries have introduced technologies to establish joint ventures or wholly foreign-owned enterprises, while the silicone industry has done little. Foreign companies attempt to monopolize and manipulate the silicone market in China. They do not transfer the production technology of methyl monomers, nor build factories in China, nor even have joint ventures in post-processing products. In this case, domestic enterprises have made breakthroughs in technology by burying their heads in research. In 1998, the 10,000-ton methyl monomer production unit of Lanxing Sparkling Chemical Plant operated normally, and the silicone industry in China has entered a rapid development stage since then.


Under the market economy environment, some methyl monomer production enterprises quit the field because of backward technology or industrial restructuring; while the backbone enterprises such as Starfire Chemical Plant, Xin'an Chemical Group Company and Jilin Petrochemical Company quickened the pace of development, and some enterprises of downstream organosilicon products and related industries also joined in. The construction of methyl monomer production units is in the ranks.


In the new century, the production of organosilicon monomers in the world has accelerated to transfer to China. In 2004, Dow Corning Co. of the United States and Wake Co. of Germany jointly established factories in China and invested in the construction of 190,000 tons/year siloxane projects in Zhangjiagang City, Jiangsu Province. In 2006, China Bluestar Group acquired the silicone business of French Rhodia Company, and became the fourth largest silicone production company in the world; in 2007, Zhejiang Xinan Group and the United States. Guomaitu High-tech New Materials Group signed a joint venture agreement to build 100,000 tons/year silicone monomer project in Jiande, Zhejiang Province. So far, four of the world's top five silicone monomer manufacturers have achieved "Made in China".


With the continuous expansion of production scale, the technical level of silicone production in China has also been greatly improved. In 2006, the annual actual production of thermal vulcanized silicone rubber and room temperature vulcanized silicone rubber exceeded 100,000 tons respectively, which completely broke the situation that foreign products occupied most of the domestic market, and also achieved large-scale export of technology and products in high temperature rubber and room temperature rubber. By the end of 2017, the production capacity of methyl monomers in China will reach 2.7 million tons.


In order to pursue high-quality development, China's silicone industry has not been put into production in 2018. Through technological transformation and bottleneck removal measures, the existing enterprises have increased the national production capacity to 3 million tons per year, ranking first in the world, and China has become a truly large producer of silicone.