Cooperation between CAS and Local Authorities

Rare Earth Isoprene Rubber Put into Use

The project “development of isoprene rubber production technology” jointly conducted by the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry (CIAC), CAS and the Research Institute of CNPC Jilin Petrochemical Company has made significant progress. The pilot products of rare earth isoprene rubber have successfully applied to all-steal radial truck tires and may replace 40% natural rubber. To satisfy the increasing demands of the national market for the synthetic rubber and fill the gaps of China’s isoprene rubber industry, the above mentioned two institutions have made substantial breakthroughs subsequently in the respects of catalysts, polymerization and condensation technology, the Cis-content of isoprene rubber, the molecular weight and the control of its distribution, and originated new rare earth isoprene rubber of China’s own intellectual property rights with the distribution of high molecular weight and narrow molecular weight and high Cis-1,4 structure content. They conducted a great number of experiments on the 20-liter continuous polymerization pilot model device and successfully applied the developed pilot products to all-steal radial truck tires. In this test, 40% natural rubber was replaced by isoprene rubber, and results showed that the use of 40% isoprene rubber in tread compound is much the same as or higher than SKI-3 and SKI-5 in terms of mixing technology, physical and mechanical properties and dynamic mechanical properties, and particularly it can conspicuously improve the rubber’s puncture resistance performance and completely meet the use requirements of all-steal radial truck tires.