in 2003, at a meeting on fluorine material in hangzhou, ceo liu chuanqi gave a speech about dongyue’s ptfe products and the ptfe industry development. this speech greatly impressed dr. zhang yongming. at that time, zhang yongming was working at perfluorinated ionomer membrane, and the monomer tetrafluoroethylene of our company is a key material to it.
on july 12th 2003, zhang yongming called ceo liu, and wondered if he could cooperate with dongyue on the project of developing ion membrane. ceo liu communicated this news with president zhang at once, and they both thought that this was a good project for dongyue to extend its industry chain. on the next day, ceo liu and vice-president zhang heng went to shanghai to meet dr. zhang. in the following week, dongyue managed to meet all the scientific research conditions that dr. zhang required.
however, it was not easy to get the project approved. at the end of 2003, zhang jianhong, zhang yongming, and zhang heng went to beijing to attend the project discussion meeting held by ministry of science and technology. at the meeting, lots of experts kindly advised zhang jianhong to give up the project, and not to take risks. since this project was firstly listed in the 6th five-year plan and then all the following five-year plans, and it still did not succeed, it would be impossible for a private enterprise to accomplish this project. but dongyue did not give up, and started its eight-year long research on it in spite of doubts from the industry.
to tackle the problems in the perfluorinated ionomer membrane project was extremely difficult. there are dozens of complex reactions and separation processes from a piece of ordinary fluorite to a piece of ion membrane that can meet the selectivity need of chlor-alkali production. and the total length of the production equipment can be several kilometers. the research and development team, including zhang yongming, zhang heng, wang jing, tang junke, wang li, and wang xuejun, strived to tackle problems in the ion membrane project step by step.
september 22rd 2003 is a date worth remembering. at 2am that day, a piece of perfluorinated ionomer membrane that was 1.35 meter long and 2.65 meter wide was successfully produced. when dongyue people saw the ion membrane slowly come out of the production line, their eyes were full of tears of delight. all the researchers were exhausted, and zhang yongming almost lost his sight. when the product was successfully produced, he almost passed out.
on june 30th 2010, ion membrane was successfully applied to the 10000-ton chlor-alkali equipment, and zhang yongming sent president zhang a text: thanks for your support over the eight years, and thanks for your accompanying for the eight years.
industrialization substitution and marketization application of ion membrane has ended the history that china chlor-alkali industry was subject to others, and has made china a strong country in chlor-alkali from a big chlor-alkali-consuming country.