Recently, Jiangxi Black Cat Carbon Black Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Black Cat Co., Ltd.”) announced an exciting news: China’s first mass production line for wet masterbatch with an annual output of 20,000 tons has been successfully completed and put into operation at its Liaoning base.
This important achievement marks that the wet masterbatch technology jointly developed by Black Cat Co., Ltd. and Beijing University of Chemical Technology has officially entered the stage of large-scale mass production, successfully achieving a key leap from a thousand-ton pilot test to a 10,000-ton mass production.
For a long time, the dry mixing process used in traditional tire manufacturing has many inherent flaws, such as uneven filler dispersion, high energy consumption, and large dust pollution.
In order to solve these industry pain points, Black Cat has launched joint research with a team of academicians from Beijing University of Chemical Technology since 2018.
They innovatively used liquid phase composite technology to successfully achieve nanoscale uniform dispersion of carbon black in the rubber matrix through carbon black slurry preparation, liquid phase composite flocculation and other processes.
According to Shi Yuming, head of the Black Cat Research Institute, wet masterbatch has significant advantages in performance as verified by a large amount of experimental data.
While maintaining basic physical properties such as tensile strength and that of traditional dry-process adhesives, its wear resistance is improved by about 20%, dynamic hysteresis performance is improved by about 30%, and energy consumption in the mixing process is reduced by 30%.
Moreover, because the wet masterbatch is in sheet form, there is no carbon black dust flying during the feeding process, which significantly improves the production environment and solves the long-standing dust control problem in the rubber industry.
At the application level, wet masterbatch has developed 8 brands of products, covering wide-body car treads, all-steel tire treads, giant tire treads and other full-scenario applications.
Third-party testing and actual tracking data from mining areas show that tires made of this material have significant performance advantages.
For example, the durability of 16.00R25 tires has been increased from 100 hours to 150 hours for traditional tires; the mileage per millimeter of tread has been increased from 1,600 kilometers to 2,600 kilometers.
This fully demonstrates that this technology can not only improve tire quality, but also effectively reduce downstream usage costs and extend product life cycle.
The industrialization path of this technology is clear and efficient.
In 2022, Black Cat Co., Ltd. will build a 4,000-ton pilot production line in Qingdao; in 2024, it will launch a production line construction project with an annual output of 160,000 tons in Liaoning; recently, the first phase of a 20,000-ton production line was put into production, becoming the first domestic wet masterbatch device to be completed and mass-produced.
This technology has passed the scientific and technological achievements appraisal organized by the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation. The appraisal committee led by Jian Xigao and Wang Yuzhong, academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, has determined that it has independent intellectual property rights and its technology has reached the international leading level.
Black Cat shares stated that the company has established a closed-loop R&D model of “enterprises developing problems – universities solving problems – market testing” through measures such as establishing academician workstations, flexibly introducing top experts, and jointly training graduate students.
In the future, the company will continue to optimize the process and promote the application expansion of wet masterbatch in high-end fields such as shock absorbers, seals, and new energy vehicle rubber parts, providing a new path for green manufacturing, energy conservation and carbon reduction in the tire and rubber industry.
