Shandong Good Achievements | Breaking through the bottleneck problem and leading the new development of high-end membrane grade polysulfone industry
Polysulfone, as a crucial thermoplastic engineering plastic, has been firmly controlled and monopolized by overseas manufacturers in the market since its industrial production in the 1960s. Nowadays, Fuhai (Dongying) New Material Technology Co., Ltd. has achieved significant breakthroughs, overcoming the key technological bottleneck of polysulfone membrane materials and bringing new hope and opportunities to China's chemical industry.
Significant breakthrough in polysulfone technology, successfully filling the domestic gap
The application scenarios of polysulfone are extremely wide and closely related to daily life. In the medical field, it is a key component of hemodialysis membranes, providing support for dialysis treatment for countless kidney disease patients; In terms of environmental protection, its presence can often be seen in water treatment membranes, helping to purify water resources and protect the ecological environment. Moreover, in national strategic emerging industries such as aerospace and semiconductors, polysulfone is an indispensable strategic key raw material that supports the research and production of many high-precision and cutting-edge technological products. These application fields have extremely high requirements for the purity, performance, and stability of polysulfone.
Previously, high-end membrane grade polysulfone resin in China relied mainly on imports, and the technology was controlled by foreign companies, resulting in high prices for polysulfone for a long time. This led to slow production and development of domestic water treatment membrane and hemodialysis membrane enterprises, restricting the development of related industries.
The polysulfone project team, through close cooperation with domestic research institutions such as Shandong University, has successfully overcome key technical bottlenecks such as inhibiting cyclization side reactions, high-purity separation and purification, and multi-directional chain end group blockade. It has become the first domestic enterprise to overcome this technical problem and has obtained 19 national invention patent authorizations. All performance indicators have reached the international advanced level, making domestic polysulfone stand out on the international stage.
Upon closer examination of the technological breakthroughs, the polysulfone project team has ingeniously reduced the generation of cyclic oligomers by finely optimizing the polymerization process conditions to suppress the side reactions of cyclization; Faced with the challenge of high-purity separation and purification, they took a different approach and developed a new separation method, which significantly improved the purity of the product; In terms of multi-directional chain segment end group blockade, the use of specific end capping agents precisely controls the molecular weight and end group structure of polymers, laying the foundation for the high quality of polysulfone products.
Building the largest domestic polysulfone production line and significantly enhancing the independent and controllable capabilities of the high-end chemical industry chain
Focusing on the technical level, the key preparation project of high-end membrane grade polysulfone has achieved a major leap in several key nodes.
On the one hand, the drawbacks of the traditional methyl chloride end capping process used in polysulfone production are becoming increasingly apparent, which not only poses potential environmental hazards but also limits the improvement of product quality and production efficiency to a certain extent. The Fuhai Polysulfone project team has boldly innovated, abandoning this traditional process and introducing a new type of liquid-phase end capping agent to promote homogeneous polymerization reactions, thereby developing new single/double end capping technologies. This change not only successfully avoided the adverse effects of chloromethane on the environment, but also significantly improved production efficiency and product quality. Taking the content index of cyclic dimers in polysulfone resin as an example, after technological improvement, its content has sharply decreased from the original 1.7wt% -2.5wt% to below 1.2wt%, effectively reducing the interference of cyclic oligomers on membrane performance, enabling membrane products to exhibit stable performance and excellent toughness during processing; At the same time, the molecular weight distribution of the product is narrower and the controllability is enhanced, ensuring the uniform and stable performance of the membrane products and the uniformity of pore size distribution, greatly improving the selectivity and permeability of the membrane, and catching up with foreign competitors in terms of retention rate and water flux.
Polysulfone at different stages
On the other hand, in the field of high-purity separation and purification, the Fuhai Polysulfone project team independently developed a proprietary new purification technology, innovatively combining evaporation crystallization and distillation processes, combined with efficient separation and purification equipment, and successfully achieved mass production of high-purity polysulfone resin products. This combination punch style technical solution can accurately and efficiently remove impurities, meeting the strict requirements for the purity of polysulfone products in high-end application scenarios.
At the same time, with the help of multi-directional chain end block technology, the Fuhai Polysulfone project team has successfully built a complete industrial key technology system and production system, achieving continuous and large-scale production, effectively ensuring the stability of product batch performance, ensuring that the quality of each batch of products can be maintained at a high standard level, and providing solid raw material supply guarantee for downstream industries.
Successful trial production of polysulfone project
In 2024, as the largest single unit polysulfone plant in China, the 7000 tons/year special engineering plastics project constructed by Fuhai (Dongying) New Materials Technology Co., Ltd. successfully produced qualified products, realizing the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements and transforming laboratory results into actual productivity. Its polysulfone products have won wide market recognition for their excellent performance and stable quality.
According to industry predictions, by the end of the 14th Five Year Plan, high-end membrane grade polysulfone products are expected to achieve an annual sales revenue of 310 million yuan, driving the coordinated development of upstream and downstream industries such as environmental water treatment and medical equipment. The annual output value is expected to reach 5 billion yuan, injecting a continuous stream of development momentum into the related industrial chain.
Save nearly 20% of costs for downstream membrane material enterprises and improve product stability
Polysulfone has a wide range of applications. Polysulfone membranes also have excellent thermal stability, maintaining their structural and performance stability even in high-temperature environments. This is of great significance for some industrial processes that require high-temperature treatment, such as high-temperature separation and filtration.
In the field of environmental water treatment, polysulfone membranes can significantly improve water treatment efficiency, reduce treatment costs, and provide people with cleaner water resources. In the medical field, the treatment rate of renal failure patients in China will gradually increase, and the demand for hemodialysis will also grow accordingly. The consumption of polysulfone membranes is expected to increase significantly. It is expected that by 2026, the domestic market size of hemodialysis membranes will reach over 8 billion yuan, providing a broad market space for the application of polysulfone membranes.
Polysulfone products can save nearly 20% of production costs for downstream membrane material production enterprises, which will greatly promote the development of downstream enterprises and significantly improve their market competitiveness.
Polysulfone finished product
Since its production, polysulfone resin has achieved stable application and sales in many customers in the water treatment membrane industry. Customer feedback shows that the casting membrane liquid is clear and stable, intuitively reflecting the high purity of the product and low impurity content; desalination and flux indicators meet the actual demand, fully indicating that the product separation performance is excellent, comparable to international competitors, and better than similar domestic products. The person in charge of the Fuhai polysulfone project said that domestic polysulfone will continue to improve and continuously polish product details to meet the growing market demand.
The successful research and development of polysulfone is an important symbol of the improvement of China's chemical industry's independent and controllable capabilities. It will provide strong support for the development of China's aerospace, medical and health, environmental water treatment and other fields, injecting new vitality into the high-quality economic development of Shandong Province.
In the future, the R&D personnel of the polysulfone project team will continue to deeply cultivate the polysulfone field, adhere to the concept of high-quality development, improve product quality and service level, and ensure high-quality and stable operation of all links with rigorous attitude and refined management. At the same time, we will respond to market changes with a more open attitude, actively build an integrated service platform of "aggregation industry+blending modification", promote the coordinated development of industries, and achieve development goals through stable and high-quality operations.
Information source: Shandong Provincial Department of Science and Technology (official website)
