Recently, the national key R&D project "Key Technologies for Industrialization of High-Performance Synthetic Rubber" led by PetroChina Co., Ltd. was launched in Sailun (Dongying) Tire Co., Ltd. An on-site evaluation meeting was held for the production demonstration of double B-class tires and the application demonstration of long-life bladders.
The evaluation meeting was organized by the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation. The participating experts inspected the tire manufacturing production line and the long-life bladder application demonstration site, and listened to application production demonstration report of the China National Petroleum Corporation, Yiweiyi Rubber Research Institute and Sailun (Dongying) Tire Co., Ltd..
The assessment believes that the functionalized solution-polymerized styrene-butadiene rubber and rare earth cis-butadiene rubber industrially produced by PetroChina Dushanzi Petrochemical Company, and the bromobutyl rubber industrially produced by Zhejiang Xinhui New Materials Co., Ltd. are used in tire treads, sidewall and inner liner respectively, and 225/55R16 tires produced by using self-developed in-situ reinforcement wet mixing technology, low-temperature one-step rubber mixing process, and electronic irradiation cross-linking process, approved by Spain IDIADA Automotive Technology SA Testing, rolling resistance and wet skid resistance have reached the EU tire labeling regulations A and B respectively.
The products produced in batches using the self-developed long-life vulcanized bladder formula and preparation technology have been certified by third-party users with an average service life of 622 times. According to the on-site inspection by experts in Sailun (Dongying) Tire Co., Ltd., the service life is more than 610 times.
The double-B tire production demonstration and the long-life vulcanized bladder application demonstration are the rubber application demonstrations following the industrial production demonstration of the four high-performance synthetic rubber that is functionalized solution-polymerized styrene-butadiene rubber, narrow-distribution rare earth cis-butadiene rubber, bromobutyl rubber and star-branched butyl rubber, and are also the last industrial production application demonstration of this project, marking the successful completion of all industrial production demonstration work in this national project.
The functionalized solution-polymerized styrene-butadiene rubber, rare-earth cis-butadiene rubber and bromobutyl rubber used in the production demonstration of double B-class tires are all independently developed by the project team. So far, the project has completed the small-scale and pilot-scale researches and industrial production demonstrations of the four high-performance synthetic rubber materials, finalized three industrial product grades, and developed two high-performance tires and long-life curing bladder manufacturing technologies, which not only realizes the localization of key core basic materials for the tire industry, but also achieves a breakthrough in the preparation of world-class tire products with key core basic materials for domestic tires. This will increase the average proportion of key basic materials for high-performance tires in my country by more than 15%, and tires will reach double B grades and above, the annual fuel saving is 5.5 million tons, leading the comprehensive upgrading of the domestic synthetic rubber and tire industry chain.
(Source: China Chemical Industry News)