Greening is the general direction of the development of the world chemical industry, and it is also the eternal theme of the fine chemical industry such as rubber additives. Although after years of efforts, the rubber additives industry has made great progress in cleaner production, but there are still a small amount of products that produce carcinogenic nitrosamines, and the cleaner production process for large-tonnage products has not yet been popularized. The situation of being forced to stop and limit production due to pollution problems still occasionally occurs.
With the improvement of people's awareness of environmental protection, the formal implementation of the "Ten Air Regulations", "Water Ten Regulations" and the new "Environmental Protection Law", coupled with the huge pressure brought by EU REACH regulations, during the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, the rubber additives industry The greening process must be accelerated.
In the author's opinion, the greening of rubber additives can be promoted from four aspects: promoting product greening, developing cleaner production processes, promoting effective "three wastes" governance models, and accelerating industry integration.
Continue to promote product green
At present, large varieties of toxic and harmful rubber additives such as accelerator NOBS and antioxidant D have achieved green substitution, but small varieties such as thiuram, sodium thiocarbamate, and pentachlorothiophenol have not yet been eliminated. In the future, the focus should be on accelerating the adjustment of the product structure of super-accelerators, accelerating the industrialization process of TBzTD (tetrabenzylthiuram disulfide), and replacing TMTD (tetramethylthiuram disulfide), which will produce nitrosamines. thiuram products. Among them, thiuram super-accelerators TMTD, TMTM (tetramethylthiuram monosulfide) and carbamate ZDC can produce carcinogenic nitrosamines, and their main substitutes TBzTD and TiBTM (tetraisobutyl monosulfide) Kituram) has been gradually realized industrialization. Pentachlorothiophenol chemical peptizers have been discontinued in Europe and the United States and other countries, and its main substitute is DBD (2,2'-dibenzoylaminodiphenyl disulfide). The production technology of these substitutes has been successfully developed in China, and its substitution efforts must be increased in the future.
Develop key technologies for cleaning processes
The development and implementation of the clean production process route is an important measure to ensure the green and environmental protection of the rubber auxiliaries production process. In recent years, the clean production technology of oxygen oxidation to produce NS, the production technology of 10,000-ton-level high thermal stability insoluble sulfur, the 10,000-ton-level clean pre-dispersant rubber auxiliary product, and the solvent method to replace the traditional acid-base method of production accelerator M cleaning The production process has made breakthroughs in the realization of no waste water discharge. However, the waste water problem of M, which is both an accelerator and a raw material for many accelerators, has not been fully resolved, and the technology without waste water discharge needs to be widely promoted; Cleaner production processes such as process, DM hydrogen peroxide oxidation process, etc., although they have been successfully developed, they also need to be promoted.
Promote the "three wastes" governance model
The rubber additives represented by accelerators are mostly wastewater with high salt, high COD and high resin. The current mainstream water treatment methods are multi-effect evaporation or MVR evaporation, biochemical treatment method, catalytic oxidation method, adsorption method, etc. However, it has been proved that many wastewater treatment methods cannot actually achieve good results in practical applications. Salty wastewater is generally first evaporated to remove salt, and then the evaporated water is subjected to biochemical treatment; if it is difficult to biochemically, its biodegradability can be improved by methods such as catalytic oxidation, and then enter into biochemical treatment. For advanced treatment, activated carbon adsorption or sand filtration can be used to make the effluent meet the standard. Among the existing treatment methods, "multi-effect evaporation or MVR evaporation + biochemical treatment" is the most effective treatment method. However, there are still relatively few companies in the industry that have the processing device at the same time, and it is necessary to accelerate the promotion and use in the industry.
Accelerate industry consolidation
Due to the promising prospects of rubber additives, domestic production capacity has expanded rapidly in recent years, and market competition will become fierce. Many small-scale, single-variety and no raw material supporting rubber additives enterprises will gradually be submerged in the wave of green chemical industry, and the large-scale and intensive operation mode will become the trend of the adjustment and layout of the rubber additives industry in the future.