barium sulfate manufacturer

YUNFU, February 20(Huizheng Information)--China's consumption concept has a characteristic when people are making a deal, habitually asking, can it be cheaper? If you don't ask like this, it seems that there is no soul in a deal, and it seems that we lost fun without bargaining. When these words become a normal practice and the price becomes the main factor to make a deal, it will place the new enterprises in an awkward position again and again, whose achievements are not well received by the market even though they have devoted themselves and invested a lot of money and manpower to make a breakthrough on technological innovations. In the end, they will become the group with the lowest price. This is not a healthy market value.

Driving high-quality development with sic-tech innovation is actually for enterprises with a certain scale. They have certain brand awareness and enterprise strength, and their innovation makes consumers more convinced and willing to try. But in the chemical industry, stability is the most important product quality, not innovation, and they will also innovate, but most of them are horizontal development, not vertical research.

Which companies will research longitudinally and thoroughly study a product?

Growing companies have not been "fixed" by the market and "tied" by customers. They are relatively free and prefer to develop their products thoroughly, but the contradiction is that their innovations are difficult to be recognized by the market. Longitudinal research and making the products more refined are only suitable for high-end markets. For enterprises with high-end demand, the comprehensive strength and product performance of enterprises is emphasized, while the price is second. They rarely change easily once cooperate, which is characteristic of the chemical industry.

Do growth companies need to innovate? Lifu Fang, the chief R&D Engineer of Yunfu Hongzhi New Materials Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Hongzhi New Materials), answered in an interview with the Huizheng Information reporter, to innovate, we must make products more refined. Because Hongzhi New Materials are making technological precipitation for entering the high-end market in the future, even if there is no profit now, we will do so.

Figure 1 Lifu Fang , chief R&D Engineer of Yunfu Hongzhi New Materials Co., Ltd.

Mr. Fang is always a chemical geek, why call him a "geek"? During the conversation, I learned that Mr. Fang was not born in a chemical engineering class. When he graduated from school, he met a good judge of talent, the first person in his life, who didn’t care whether Mr. Fang was born in a major, was willing to let him do R&D and experiment in the laboratory and let him participate in learning in every aspect of production. After entering the chemical industry, Mr. Fang didn't have too many restrictions in his mind, he was bolder than ordinary people, and he had done many breakthrough experiments. He was diligent and almost thoroughly understood the "chemical routines" through books and the Internet in just a few years. He said with humor, it was luck and hard work that kept me in the laboratory.

A few years later, he was appreciated by another good judge of talent in the industry. It turns out that the fact the good judge of talent didn't see the wrong person, and the research done by Mr. Fang made this enterprise reach a new level and the peak of its development history. With many years of experience in chemical engineering, Mr. Fang only took a few words of understatement and he is more grateful to two good judges of talents. At the same time, recalling that Mr. Fang was engaged in research and development, his wife was pregnant and gave birth, but he continued to devote himself to the production experiment the next day after the delivery. During the conversation with Mr. Fang, I saw the blueprint for creating a century-old enterprise as described by the pilot with a technology background.

Figure 2 Lifu Fang won the honor of Raw Materials for Science and Technology

Innovation Engineer Award in Coatings Industry in 2020

Chemical geeks play with barium sulfate

——Create a new pattern of precipitated barium sulfate with the original process of sulfuric acid and barium carbonate

Mr. Fang used barium sulfate as an example. He introduced that barium sulfate looks like powders, but in fact, it can have particles of different sizes and various shapes. Hongzhi New Materials has developed barium sulfate with the shape of a flake hexagon, needle strip, tube, hollow ball, tablet, etc. The bending strength of the sheet is higher, the tensile force of the strip is stronger, the specific gravity of the hollow type is lighter and the covering power is better. The smaller the particle size, the higher the gloss and the better the transparency. In terms of product application, precipitated barium sulfate is mainly used in the coating industry, such as powder coatings, anti-corrosion paints, automotive paints, furniture paints, exterior wall paints, electronic inks, printing inks, color pastes, etc. It is also widely used in plastics and rubber industries, such as modified plastics (high-gloss PP, ABS, PE, PS, PA, PPO, PPS, PBT, PET, flame-retardant plastics, automotive plastics, appliance housings, films, building materials plastics), optical functional fillers for membranes, lithium battery separators, rubber elastomers, etc.

Figure 3 Electron micrograph of barium sulfate with different sizes and various

shapes from Hongzhi New Materials

In addition to morphological research, there is also surface modification. How to make barium sulfate with different particle sizes disperse directly in various solvents instead of some agglomerated coarse particles. There are also various requirements, for example, improving the water resistance and transparency of downstream products to make the color rendering better. Hongzhi New Material adopts the original precipitation production process, using sulfuric acid and barium carbonate as raw materials, strictly controlling various parameters in the process to produce precipitated barium sulfate with the characteristics of controllable particle size, controllable morphology, high whiteness, bluish phase, no sulfide, no odor, no black spots and impurities, good dispersibility, good suspension, good thixotropy, etc. At present, Hongzhi New Material has the ability to produce all kinds of modified ultra-fine precipitated barium sulfate products with an average particle size of 30 nm to 10μm, and wants to make this industry more refined.

Hongzhi New Materials is now a growth-oriented enterprise, and its production capacity is still expanding. The second phase of the factory is about to be put into production. With the existing production capacity, our products are supplied to paint paste, inorganic coatings, ceramics, water-based inks, and other enterprises. The application and feedback are very good, which further strengthens our determination to persist in doing it.

Figure 4 Mr. Fang introduces barium sulfate to Huizheng information reporter

The ambition to become a century-old national enterprise

Mr. Fang pointed out the phenomenon of the low-end market in China, most of the domestic ink factories and paint factories are rough production, just pursuing simple production, selling and making money, and will not think about why, the selection and application of various raw materials, and how to do better. Therefore, it is difficult for domestic market values to breed high-end products. Most consumers are more willing to pay for the cheaper price and only look at the price, which makes people devote themselves to technological innovation frustrated. When all innovations are based on more cost saving, it also limits innovation itself.

The low-end market is much larger than the high-end market, and the threshold is low. If growing enterprises want to survive, they must experience the low-end market first, and then develop into the high-end market with a certain economic strength, which is a model of developing the market first and then the product. What makes Hongzhi New Materials special is that there is a technical pilot, who is unwilling to do ordinary products only. Most of the money it earns from the low-end market is invested in the refined research of products. It knows that mastering high-end and refined technology is the foundation of being a century-old national enterprise and not being replaced by the market.

Between the lines, I can feel Fang's dedication to technology research. However, due to practical reasons, it is temporarily impossible to display, and enterprises need more time to settle better management, and more detailed application research, which is the bottleneck that Hongzhi New Materials needs to break through in the appearance stage summarized by Mr. Fang.

Time: Compared with foreign high-end enterprises, the technical gap between 20 and 30 years exists objectively.

Management: Hongzhi New Materials was established in 2017. Mr. Fang is not satisfied with the hygiene problems ranging from large-scale management to small-scale laboratory. But only dissatisfaction can make it better.

Application: This is the most troublesome place not only for Mr. Fang but also for all technological innovations. Mr. Fang visited Hongzhi's laboratory with Huizheng Information reporter. In the laboratory of color paste and coating application, Hongzhi New Materials has done many experiments on weather resistance and water resistance. What are the effects of adding barium sulfate with different diameters in color paste, such as gloss, viscosity, color rendering, etc. However, this is only a study in the laboratory, an experiment based on the problems and needs of color paste and coating that the laboratory personnel can think of, rather than a real application. They urgently need to cooperate and research with more downstream factories, so as to make the products more realistic. In addition, Hongzhi New Materials also needs to grow together with domestic manufacturers and make products well together.

Summary

Don't indulge in the pleasure that the low-end market can make money quickly, have the vision of extending the development prospect of the enterprise, and be willing to sacrifice the immediate profits, do research and development for the technologies that will be available in five or ten years, aiming at international high-end enterprises, and continue to self-examine and make efforts. Hongzhi New Materials let the author see the pattern and ambition that national enterprises should have.