From November 24 to 25, 2023, the 23rd National Fine Chemical Industry (Binhai) Conference was held. At the meeting, Luo Yamin, vice chairman of the National fine Chemical raw materials and intermediates industry Collaboration Group, pointed out that after years of development, China’s fine chemical industry has a prominent position in the global chemical industry pattern, and has gradually entered the stage of green development, transformation and upgrading. The annual output value of the domestic fine chemical industry is 4 trillion to 5 trillion yuan, forming a relatively complete industrial system of product categories.
In the next five years, the average annual growth rate of China’s fine chemical market is about 6%
Fine chemical industry is the short for fine chemical engineering or fine chemical industry in the industrial field, which refers to the design, innovation, research and development, manufacturing and application of fine chemicals with comprehensive requirements for function and performance, and is also one of the most dynamic emerging fields in today’s chemical industry.
Zou Shuping, professor of Zhejiang University of Technology, introduced at the forum that fine chemical industry has many varieties, high technical content, high added value of products, wide radiation and other characteristics, including pesticides, dyes, high purity, catalysts and functional polymer materials, raw materials and other 11 categories. Among them, the proportion of apis and their intermediates, pesticides and their intermediates reached more than 32%, which is related to major issues such as environment, health and safety.
Luo Yamin said that in the next five years, the overall global fine chemical market will grow at an average annual rate of 3% to 4%, and the overall scale will reach $2.8 trillion in 2027. Among all consumption regions, China’s fine chemical market has the fastest annual growth rate of about 6%. In the next five years, global battery chemicals, electronic chemicals, pharmaceuticals, nutrition ingredients, adhesives and sealants, flavors and fragrances will show higher than the industry average growth rate.
According to the “China Fine Chemical Market Prospects and Investment Opportunities Research Report” released by Zhongjin Puhua Industrial Research Institute, it is expected that the market size of China’s fine chemical industry is expected to reach 11 trillion yuan in 2027. At the same time, China’s fine chemical industry rate (the proportion of fine chemical output value in the total chemical output value) is also increasing year by year, from 36.5% in 2016 to 41.2% in 2021, and it is planned to increase to 55% by 2025. She Yuanbin, academician of the European Academy of Humanities and Natural Sciences and president of Zhejiang Emergency Management College, pointed out that China has built more than 30 fine chemical technology centers in new fields, and as many as 5,000 fine chemical production enterprises in new fields, producing tens of thousands of products with an annual production capacity of more than 2,000 tons.
In the transition period of China’s chemical industry, the fine chemical industry will face huge upgrading opportunities: the rapid change in downstream market demand drives the continuous progress of technology and products in the fine chemical industry, and the “dual carbon” goal and digital trend are also changing the nature of the fine chemical industry.
Promote the development of fine chemical industry with bio-manufacturing technology
For the future development trend of China’s fine chemical industry, She Yuanbin believes that fine chemical industry, as an important part of the chemical industry, its proportion (fine chemical rate) reflects the development level of a country’s chemical industry, provides rich material resources for the development and progress of society, and is one of the important industries indispensable to human society.
Zou Shuping pointed out that with the further improvement of environmental and industry standards requirements of advanced industries, traditional chemical manufacturing problems have become increasingly prominent: high consumption of raw materials in the manufacturing process, large emissions of “three wastes”, serious environmental pollution, chemical production of 1 kg of fine chemicals produces an average of 5-50 kg by-products; The reaction steps of synthetic pathway are long and the yield is low. Poor level of product impurities and quality control. Under the “double carbon” goal, the green transformation of fine chemical industry has become a global consensus and is also the strategic development direction of China. The use of bio-manufacturing technology can promote the development of fine chemical industry. The advantages of biofabrication technology perfectly match the needs of fine chemicals for processes, pathways and quality, helping to achieve product quality improvement and carbon reduction in large-scale production processes. With biotechnology as the core, the use of biological tissues or organisms for material processing, and integration of engineering, chemistry, physics and other theories and methods, Low carbon and green production of fine chemicals can reduce industrial energy consumption by 15%~80%, raw material consumption by 35%~75%, air pollution by 50%~90%, water pollution by 33%~80%, and production costs by 9%~90%.
Yao Xianping, academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and president of Hangzhou Chemical Research Institute, said that bio-based materials are effective carriers for collecting carbon, fixing carbon and efficiently using carbon, and the annual growth rate of global bio-based materials is 27%. Every year, the global biomass energy of 148 billion to 180 billion tons, only 3% is used, the United States by 2030 bio-based products will replace 25% of organic chemicals and 20% of petroleum raw materials, about 85% of plastics can be replaced by bio-based plastics.
Fine chemical industry development trend
Fine chemical industry is an industrial field with high added value and high technology content. The development of fine chemical industry can enhance the national industrial competitiveness, realize the optimal utilization of resources, promote the upgrading of economic structure, enhance the ability of scientific and technological innovation, and expand foreign trade.
It is an important direction for the development of fine chemical industry to strengthen technological innovation, emphasize and optimize the structure of fine chemical products, and focus on the development of high-performance, specialized, composite and green products.
1. The state attaches great importance to the development of fine chemicals – functional dyes in the field of people’s life and health
Functional dyes used in the field of life and health for disease diagnosis, cancer early screening, gene sequencing, fluorescent surgical navigation and other markers and imaging will become the development direction of a new generation of functional dyes, which will provide powerful tools for human conquest of cancer and other diseases. More importantly, dyes have developed from traditional textile printing and dyeing into high-end special chemicals indispensable for emerging industries such as photosensitizers, photoresist, fluorescent probes, optical display materials, and are used in ecological textile dyeing, biological identification markers, integrated disease diagnosis and treatment, and electronic information.
2. Surfactants have a wide and important application in the field of microelectronics and information technology
Surfactants can effectively reduce the damage and pollution of silicon materials in the slicing, grinding, polishing, lithography and cleaning processes of semiconductor integrated circuit manufacturing. It is also an essential ingredient in printing, copying, developing and many other information and photographic materials. There is a large gap between China’s surfactants and foreign countries in the field of high-tech, such as high-end additives in the field of materials, ultra-low temperature cleaning agents and antifreeze for national defense, chip cleaning agents and etching agents in the field of semiconductor photovoltaic, and high-end surfactants such as drug carriers in the field of life 90% rely on imports, and it is urgent to carry out innovative independent research and development.
3. Creation technology and application of green pesticides
Further strengthen pesticide innovation strategies based on target orientation, natural product orientation and intermediate derivatization to achieve original innovation. Build a biological activity screening platform, promote the evaluation and development system of new compounds by sharing, and collect the strength of scientific research, enterprises and governments to achieve China’s leap from a large pesticide country to a powerful pesticide country.
4. Energetic chemicals and high energy passivity will be the main development goals
Nitrogen-rich and nitrogen-full hybrid compounds have higher energy, but how to batch synthesis is a big challenge; Azoles, furazan, energetic ionic salts, etc. have high energy and excellent safety performance, and have broad prospects. Propellants and high-energy fuels are the main power source of aerospace industry, and high-energy green is the main development direction: fuels and propellants with higher energy and density can further increase the load of aircraft and extend the range; More safe and environmentally friendly energy compounds are gradually replacing high-hazard propellants and fuels; The trend of cross fusion between solid and liquid propellants and fuels has become a new way to increase propulsion energy.
5. The digital and Internet age gives new vitality and development space to photosensitive imaging
The core of digital imaging is networked digital image or digital content. China has continued to make efforts in the field of digital mobile terminals such as smartphones and tablet computers and has made some major progress and breakthroughs, how to shift from simple Chinese manufacturing to Chinese design and manufacturing, such as focusing on the “neck” technical problems in emerging research fields such as high-end electronic information chemical manufacturing. It is still a difficult and long road to master core key technologies and expand coverage areas.
In the future, through the deep combination of molecular design, material synthesis, separation and purification, application and manufacturing, China will continue to break through the “jam neck” technology in the field of electronic information chemicals.
Isosorbide is a new, green, non-toxic and chiral biological chemical raw material. In recent years, under the trend of bio-based development, the use of isosorbide as a copolymer to improve the properties of polyester, polyurethane, polyether, polycarbonate and other polymers has become a focus of market research.
Isosorbide is an ideal substitute for bisphenol A. The transparency, wear resistance, impact resistance and biosafety of isosorbide based polycarbonate copolymerized from isosorbide are superior to traditional bisphenol A polycarbonate, and have broad market prospects in automotive, decoration materials and optical instruments. At the same time, its biodegradability also makes it very potential in the field of environmental protection, through isosorbide modified PBAT (polybutylene adipate terephthalate) resin, so that the modified product has better tensile strength and environmental degradability, can be applied to the production of agricultural film, disposable straws and packaging bags. In addition, isosorbide based plasticizers can replace traditional phthalate plasticizers, and have good market prospects in the application fields of children’s products, food and medical devices. It can be predicted that as the production technology of isosorbide becomes more mature and the production cost is further reduced, its application field will be further expanded.
At present, the industrialization of isosorbide of polyester grade is still blank in China. Different from the traditional polymer raw materials from fossil energy sources, isosorbide synthesis raw materials from cellulose, starch and other sources of renewable biomass, its industrial traditional synthesis method with liquid concentrated sulfuric acid as the catalyst, there are high equipment requirements, poor selectivity, low yield problems, resulting in high production costs.
The isosorbide scientific research team of Beijing Chemical Institute developed a new solid acid catalyst, solved the problem of low selectivity of target products in the preparation of isosorbide by “one-step” solvent-free process, and completed the scale-up pilot test of the whole process, realized the green and large-scale preparation of isosorbide, and the product quality reached polyester grade specifications. The research team focuses on catalyst design, reaction process innovation, separation and purification methods and product applications, and has applied for 13 Chinese invention patents, of which 4 are authorized; 1 foreign-related patent application, the technology has complete independent intellectual property rights.
In the next step, the scientific research team of Beihua Institute will continue to innovate and make positive contributions to the early realization of the industrialization of China’s polyester grade isosorbide, the promotion of green development and the realization of the “double carbon” goal.
Bio-based fine chemicals refer to environmentally friendly chemical products made from biomass or (and) through biological reaction processes. From a technical point of view, almost all fine chemicals made from fossil energy can be replaced by biological bases, including biools containing 2 to 6 carbon atoms, organic acids, diacids, diamines and diols. Among these chemicals, the most promising are long-chain dibasic acids, bio-based 1, 6-hexanediol, bio-succinic acid and lactide, which can be used in the production of bulk bio-kindragon and polyester. Bio-based fine chemicals can replace fossil energy based compounds, and have many advantages such as carbon reduction and sustainability, which can bring new opportunities to the market.
Dalian Institute has been deeply engaged in the field of bio-based fine chemicals for many years, and has formed bio-based chemical categories such as diacids, dialcohols and key esters.
The technology of producing long chain dibasic acid by microbial fermentation is a biological manufacturing technology in which normal long chain alkanes are converted into long chain dibasic acid with corresponding carbon number through specific microbial metabolic process. In 2006, Dalian Institute’s first generation of long chain dibasic acid technology realized industrial application; In 2012, according to the needs of technological upgrading, Dalian Institute accelerated the research on process optimization technology and engineering amplification technology, and carried out the development of the second generation of long chain dibasic acid preparation technology; In 2016, “Research on Key Scientific Issues in the process of Biotransformation of the second generation Fermentation Technology to prepare long chain diacid” won the third prize of the SINOPEC Prospective Basic Research Science Award; In 2019, the second generation of long chain dibasic acid technology developed by Dalian Institute completed 1000 tons/year industrial test and pilot production.
After years of technical research, Dalian Institute has realized the whole process from fermentation strains to fermentation process and refining process, successively completed the strain industrial test and product refining industrial test, and on this basis, completed the development of 55,000 tons/year complete technical process package. In 2023, an enterprise in Inner Mongolia was allowed to invest in the construction of 10,000 tons/year equipment, and the complete set of process technology was licensed for the first time.
1, 4-butanediol (BDO) is a monomer of degradable polyester materials, and biobutyl butanediol provides a biobase source for degradable materials. Based on the first generation maleic anhydride process BDO technology, Dalian Institute developed a complete set of bio-based BDO technology, using bio-succinic acid as raw material, through esterification and hydrogenation route to obtain bio-based BDO. In 2022, the bio-based BDO complete set of technology permits a Shandong enterprise to invest in the construction of 30,000 tons/year equipment, achieving the first technology license.
As the key monomer of polylactic acid synthesis, lactide has relatively high technical barriers to its preparation, which is the “jam neck” technology restricting the development of domestic polylactic acid industry. In order to solve the problem of “stuck point” in the process of lactide synthesis, Dalian Institute developed a proprietary reactor and equipment, which effectively increased the product yield and reduced the production energy consumption and cost. Up to now, the pilot technology has passed the technical evaluation of Sinopec, and the whole is at the leading level in China; The pilot scale study has been completed, the whole process of continuous preparation of lactide has been opened up, the feasibility of independent development of technology and equipment has been verified, the polymerization grade lactide monomer has been obtained, and the 10,000-ton process package is being prepared.
As China’s carbon market takes shape and the EU implements a market carbon tax, biobased chemicals will demonstrate their low-carbon value. As one of the world’s largest consumer markets for bio-based chemicals and downstream materials, the EU has a large audience for its products under the official long-term policy promotion. According to the European Union’s Industrial Biotechnology Vision, 30% to 60% of fine chemicals will be bio-based by 2030. China’s relevant plan mentions that bio-based products will account for 25% of total chemical production. Bio-based fine chemicals are experiencing a period of rapid development.
