Sail across the sea

Chapter 223 An Old Event Many Years Ago

Vitamin E, also known as tocopherol, is an extremely versatile organic compound.In medicine, vitamin E can be used as an intracellular antioxidant to treat various diseases.In the food industry, vitamin E can be used as a preservative additive, but also as a nutritional enhancer.

In the feed industry, vitamin E is an important additive that can help livestock and poultry immunity, improve meat quality, and increase egg production. According to statistics, vitamin E used in the feed industry accounts for about half of the global output.In addition, vitamin E is also used as a cosmetic additive and as an antioxidant for plastics.

The production of vitamin E includes synthetic method and natural extraction method. The price of natural vitamin E produced by the latter is higher, but the output is limited, so the main production method is synthetic method.

The principle of synthesizing vitamin E is very simple to say, that is to use two intermediates, namely trimethylhydroquinone and isophytic alcohol, to synthesize under the action of a catalyst.

With the principle in place, the next step is process design and process equipment manufacturing, and the specific process is related to one of the factors, that is, the catalyst used in the synthesis.

From the 20s to the 70s, it was a peak in the research of vitamin E synthesis technology. Foreign pharmaceutical manufacturers developed new synthesis processes one after another, and the main difference was the choice of catalyst.According to literature records, catalysts proposed during this period include zinc chloride, aluminum trichloride, aluminum silicate, p-toluenesulfonic acid, boron trifluoride, etc., and there are dozens of them.

The paper published by Liao Derong mentioned by Gao Fan is precisely about the catalyst for the synthesis of vitamin E.In that paper, Liao Derong proposed the idea of ​​using a compound containing rare earth element cerium as a catalyst, and gave some experimental results, showing that rare earth catalysts have certain advantages.

Liao Derong's original intention to write this article was actually quite accidental. He had worked in a pharmaceutical company outside the province in his early years and was exposed to content related to vitamin E synthesis.After coming to Maolin Province, because Maolin is a province with a large number of rare earths, the Chemical Engineering Design Institute has always had research projects on rare earth catalysts, mainly the application of rare earth catalysts in the field of petrochemicals.

Liao Derong also had an idea, or to put it more vulgarly, he did some research on using rare earths as catalysts for the synthesis of vitamin E based on the mentality of being idle, and he published a paper and handed it over to the design institute. It can be regarded as some scientific research workload.

As for the follow-up research, the design institute did not have such a requirement, and Liao Derong himself had no interest, so he put it aside.

Some time ago, Gao Fan helped Canghai Chemical Fertilizer Factory to develop a rare-earth synthetic ammonia catalyst. In order to find some cover for his golden finger, he checked many domestic journals. thing.

In the early 90s, a Japanese pharmaceutical company launched a new vitamin E production process using cerium-based compounds as catalysts, which not only increased the synthesis efficiency by nearly [-]%, but also reduced the requirements for equipment. improvement.

After the release of this new technology, a scholar in China wrote an article stating that the Japanese technology was plagiarized from China. The evidence is this paper published by Liao Derong more than ten years ago.

This kind of accusation, of course, is just some verbal disputes, which have no substantive effect, but are occasionally cited by scholars to prove the rigidity of China's scientific research system, or to prove the "artisan spirit" of Japanese companies.

Real industry insiders have a more objective view on this case.Everyone believes that the Japanese craftsmanship should not have much to do with Liao Derong's discovery.

First, it is very common practice to use rare earth elements as catalysts for chemical synthesis, and it is entirely possible for the Japanese to independently discover the role of rare earth elements in vitamin E synthesis.

Secondly, the magazine "Maolin Chemical Industry" is really not a well-known publication.This magazine is an official publication of the Maolin Provincial Department of Chemical Industry. The main content is to publish speeches by leaders and work trends, as well as some experience exchanges and the like. doggerel.

This kind of magazine still has some influence in the domestic industry. After all, all provinces have such publications, and then "commercial mutual subscriptions" will be carried out, so everyone in the chemical industry knows it.But if you want to say that a Japanese chemical company went to such a publication to plagiarize some inventions and creations, it is a bit taken for granted.

When Gao Fan thought of this incident, he just sighed and felt sorry. Such things are really not uncommon in this era.Liao Derong's discovery is still some distance away from industrial application, and it is not enough to apply for a patent. Unless a company is willing to invest in research and development, it will be impossible to prevent others from developing a new technology more than ten years later.

This time, Gao Fan was trapped by money and began to rack his brains to find opportunities to make money. Vitamin production was also included in his money-making plan, and he remembered the new technology of vitamin E again.

Vitamins are a large market, and vitamin E does not account for a large proportion of it, but it also has a scale of hundreds of millions of dollars.Specifically, the total global demand for vitamin E is about 8000 tons, and the price of vitamin E per kilogram is 40 US dollars. The multiplication of the two numbers is 3.2 million US dollars. This figure is currently growing at a rate of 10% to 15% per year. .

China's current vitamin E production is less than 100 tons. Not only can it not be exported, but a part of vitamin E needs to be imported every year to meet the needs of the domestic market.

There are two reasons why China's vitamin E production is not high.One is that the two main raw materials for the synthesis of vitamin E, trimethylhydroquinone and isophytol, cannot be domestically produced, or to be precise, because of the low level of technology, the production of domestically produced trimethylhydroquinone and isophytol is extremely low. And the cost is higher than import.The second reason is that the production equipment for synthesizing vitamin E also has a certain technical content, which cannot be manufactured in China, and it also depends on imports.

In this era, there are too many industries with shortcomings in the country. The production of vitamin E is really not an important industry related to the national economy and people's livelihood. It is impossible for the country to invest too much money in this small product category.

Under the background that steel, urea, ethylene and other important products have not yet achieved self-sufficiency, isn't it a joke that you talk about vitamin E being stuck abroad?

The country has no time to pay attention to this small product, but Gao Fan is quite interested in it.Regarding the new process of using rare earth catalysts in the synthesis of vitamin E, Gao Fan knew some key details, and he took the lead to develop this process, using cheap vitamin E to seize the international market, and took a big piece of the 3.2 million US dollar cake , isn't it fragrant?

(End of this chapter)