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July 16, 2024 21:34 Source: China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation Author: Xie Jiang, Xie Hui, Zhang Jinfeng

Jianghan Salt Chemical Industry leverages its own brine resource advantages to extend the salt chemical industry chain and provide high-quality raw materials for park enterprises.

Sinopec Jianghan Salt Chemical Hubei Co., Ltd. (Jianghan Salt Chemical for short) combines its own advantages in resources, technology and products with the local government's preferential policies for attracting investment, attracting leading enterprises in the industry to set up factories nearby, forming the Jianghan Salt Chemical Industrial Park with upstream and downstream integration. So far, three major industrial areas have been built in the Jianghan Salt Chemical Industrial Park, namely the New Chemical Industrial Park, Changfei Qianjiang Science and Technology Park and Qianjiang Microelectronics Industrial Park, with a total of 26 companies settled in. In 2022, the total sales of Jianghan Salt Chemical's products in the Jianghan Salt Chemical Industrial Park will exceed 200 million yuan, setting a historical record.

Expanding sales channels for salt chemical by-products

"Qianjiang City vigorously promotes the construction of Jianghan Salt Chemical Industrial Park. It is urgently needed for the salt chemical industry to further improve resource-based products and services such as chlorine, hydrogen, and steam to drive and promote regional economic development. At present, the 'implementation of salt chemical fine chemicals and supporting projects' has been written into the 2023 government work report. The Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government have also provided us with a good development environment for strengthening, optimizing and expanding the salt chemical industry." At the beginning of the year, Jianghan Salt Chemical Industry held a staff representative meeting to conduct a serious analysis of the development environment.

Brine resources are unique to Jianghan Oilfield and stand out in the Sinopec system. Sinopec Jianghan Oilfield salt rock resources are buried 1,000 to 3,000 meters underground, with a thickness of more than 2,000 meters. Jianghan Salt Chemical is a comprehensive chemical enterprise built by Jianghan Oilfield using underground brine resources. Brine is extracted from underground and transported to Jianghan Salt Chemical through pipelines. While producing refined salt and edible salt, it electrolyzes brine to produce chlorine, caustic soda, hydrogen and other salt chemical by-products, which are sold as chemical raw materials and fuels.

The sales of these salt chemical byproducts once troubled them. Take hydrogen as an example. When the plant was built, the annual output was only a few hundred tons. Due to the limitations of transportation volume and radius, and insufficient market development, most of the hydrogen was directly discharged, except for a small part of it compressed into steel cylinders for export. With the development of salt chemical industry over the years, the scale of production equipment has been continuously expanded. The annual output of chlor-alkali equipment has reached 200,000 tons, and the annual output of hydrogen has reached 5,000 tons.

Integrated industrial chain attracts enterprises to settle in

Over the past decade, with the implementation of the country's "Broadband China" strategy, the demand for optical fiber preforms has continued to grow, the demand for hydrogen needed to make optical fiber has increased sharply, and related industries have developed rapidly.

Changfei Optical Fiber Company is the world's leading supplier of optical fiber preforms, optical fibers and optical cables. Optical fiber manufacturing consumes a large amount of hydrogen, caustic soda and chlorine. In 2015, Jianghan Salt Chemical Industry took the initiative to connect with the company. After the company settled in, optical fiber giants such as Japan's Shin-Etsu and France's Air Liquide settled here. Around these optical fiber companies, the first industrial area in Jianghan Salt Chemical Industrial Park, Changfei Qianjiang Science and Technology Park, was born.

"What attracted us is the complete integrated industrial chain here," said Song Xianjun, director of the management committee of the Changfei Qianjiang Science and Technology Park. Hydrogen is a flammable and explosive gas that is inconvenient to transport over long distances. Jianghan Salt Chemical Industry has greatly reduced transportation risks through pipeline transportation and effectively reduced the production costs of enterprises, thus attracting many high-tech enterprises to settle here.

In addition to hydrogen, other salt chemical byproducts such as caustic soda and steam have also found stable sales channels in the park. Pipelines like silver dragons fly in the air, winding from Jianghan Salt Chemical to the Jianghan Salt Chemical Industrial Park across the river, connecting with many world-renowned optical fiber manufacturers.

In addition to the advantages of the industrial chain, the park's powerful resource recycling system also attracts enterprises. How to deal with the large amount of high-salt wastewater in production is a major problem faced by enterprises. "The extraction of brine from underground requires a large amount of fresh water. We repeatedly treat the wastewater to meet the use standards and then use it for brine extraction. This not only solves the wastewater treatment problem of enterprises in the industrial park, but also reduces the use of fresh water." said Chen Xufeng, deputy director of the Safety and Environmental Protection Department of Jianghan Salt Chemical Industry.

In addition, the waste liquid dilute hydrochloric acid produced in the production of YOFC is recycled by Jianghan Salt Chemical through pipelines, reacting with the by-product liquid produced by the bleaching powder concentrate device to release chlorine, which is then dehydrated and pressurized to become commercial chlorine. Through this process, the company can produce 22 tons of chlorine per day, thus realizing the reuse of by-products.

Provide high-quality raw materials for enterprises in the park

Today, several by-products of Jianghan Salt Chemical Industry have gone from being "useless" to "hot", with sales exceeding 50 million yuan in 2022. Among them, chlorine is mainly supplied to enterprises in the park to produce silicon tetrachloride; hydrogen, after purification, is used as raw materials together with caustic soda, steam, silicon tetrachloride, etc. to manufacture optical fiber preforms; sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, etc. are used as raw materials to manufacture photoresist cleaning fluid.

In order to provide high-quality raw materials to enterprises in the park, Jianghan Salt Chemical Company maintains close communication with important customers, downstream enterprises in the park, and various operation departments, rationally allocates resources, and ensures the balance of large systems, with a focus on the balance of the chlor-alkali hydrogen system, the balance of the water system, and the balance of the steam system, in order to ensure the balance of the park and high-load operation of production equipment.

"The production of chip-grade high-purity hydrogen peroxide requires steam to maintain a constant temperature and humidity in the production plant, and it participates in heat exchange, heating or product drying in the process," said a relevant person in charge of a microelectronics materials company.

For many years, chip-grade high-purity hydrogen peroxide has been a "bottleneck" process material for the semiconductor industry. With the first phase of Jingrui (Hubei) Microelectronics Materials Co., Ltd. put into production in Jianghan Salt Chemical Industrial Park, the stable and high-quality steam supply in the park has effectively guaranteed the smooth operation of the high-purity hydrogen peroxide production equipment, breaking the foreign monopoly of chip-grade high-purity hydrogen peroxide production technology and realizing the localization of chip-grade high-purity hydrogen peroxide.

At present, the products of upstream and downstream enterprises in the park complement each other, forming a mutually beneficial and win-win development model with Jianghan Salt Chemical as the leader, close connection between the beginning and the end, sharing of corporate resources, and recycling of materials, with a complete industrial chain and high economic efficiency.

After years of development, the park has shown a good trend of concentrated development and has achieved four world firsts, namely, the world's largest optical fiber preform production base, the optical fiber industry cluster with the most complete global industrial chain, the world's largest gas-melting quartz material production base, and the world's largest optical fiber supporting quartz material production base. It has formed the world's most complete rod fiber industry chain in Qianjiang City, changing the development pattern of Qianjiang City's single industrial structure and heavy type. Because there are many world-renowned optical fiber production companies in Jianghan Salt Chemical Industrial Park, Wangchang Town where the industrial park is located has also gained the reputation of "Optical Fiber Town".

In 2022, as more companies settled in the park, Jianghan Salt Chemical accelerated the renewal and upgrading of its equipment. On November 18, 2022, the 100,000 tons/year electrolysis equipment renewal and technical transformation project (50,000 tons of electrolytic cells in advance) was successfully put into operation. After the project is fully put into use, it can increase hydrogen production by 2,500 tons per year, further meet the production needs of downstream companies, and empower the development of the park.

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