Can graphene become the springboard of high-end coating enterprises?

Graphene, known as "black gold" in the industry, has always been a topic. As one of the fields of graphene application, the attempt of coating industry on graphene coating has never stopped. Can graphene become the springboard of high-end coating enterprises? Recently, in response to investors' inquiries, Chongqing Three Gorges said that the company's graphene anticorrosive coating has been pushed into the market. Chongqing Sanxia said that with the advancement of industrialization, the demand for heavy anti-corrosion field will become larger and larger, and functional coatings with excellent performance, such as graphene coatings, have a broad market prospect. The company has been exploring the development of high-performance coating products with good anti-corrosion and wear-resistant properties, including graphene anti-corrosion coating. Based on the good market development prospect, Chongqing Three Gorges continues to increase the investment layout of graphene coating.

As early as November 2015, Chongqing Three Gorges and Sichuan Tianhui Changyu New Energy Technology Development Co., Ltd. signed a strategic cooperation agreement. Tianhui transferred 10% of its 100% equity of stone mining to Chongqing Three Gorges, with a transfer price of 300 million yuan. Sitong mining owns the exploration right of Jianshan graphite mine in Nanjiang County, Sichuan Province. It has registered 50.35 million tons of graphite mine in the Department of land and resources of Sichuan Province, with an estimated value of 3.152 billion yuan. In November 2017, Chongqing Three Gorges signed an investment agreement with the Management Committee of Sichuan Pengshan Economic Development Zone, which will register an independent enterprise legal person in Pengshan District, Meishan City to build the Three Gorges Graphene coating production line project, which will produce 30000 tons of graphene coating and Water-based industrial coating annually, with a total planned investment of 200 million yuan. In December 2018, Three Gorges, Hunan Minghu Technology Co., Ltd. and Hunan dexili Information Technology Co., Ltd. jointly funded the establishment of Hunan Shengbang New Material Co., Ltd. to manufacture and sell water-based industry and water-based graphene coating, and to invest in new projects. The overall planning production scale of the project is 15000 tons / year environment-friendly and energy-saving coatings, including 13000 tons / year water-based industrial coatings and 2000 tons / year water-based graphene coatings. At the beginning of 2019, Chongqing Three Gorges paint Co., Ltd. and Hanshou Fine Chemical Industrial Park made further communication and Discussion on the project of Fine Chemical Industrial Park. The fine chemical industry park project has an investment of 200 million yuan. It mainly produces high-end cutting-edge products such as graphene paint and waterborne resin.

After the project is completed and put into operation, the annual output value is expected to reach 500 million yuan. Chongqing Three Gorges said that graphite, as an important strategic new material for the "new normal" of national sustainable development, especially the advent of graphene, may bring new opportunities for the company's industrial innovation and upgrading. In addition, in recent years, the army of graphene coatings has been increasing. Feilu said on the investor interaction platform that the company is in the process of research on nuclear power coating and graphene coating. The company's current technical reserve and management ability is fully capable of developing nuclear power coating and graphene coating. Once the feasibility is determined, the relevant work can be carried out quickly. In order to seek technological breakthrough and technological innovation in the field of industrial heavy-duty anticorrosion, we have carried out in-depth cooperation with polycarbonate composite in graphene anticorrosive coating technology. The two sides are cooperating in the field of graphene epoxy anticorrosive primer. Last July, Shandong Pentium paint Co., Ltd. signed a strategic cooperation contract with Europa new materials. The two sides will closely cooperate in the field of graphene coating and launch high-end graphene anticorrosive coating products. Gu Shigang, general manager of Pentium, said that under the condition of serious surplus of low-end coatings and increasingly strict environmental protection requirements, while vigorously developing waterborne coatings, the coating industry must layout the high-end development of coatings in advance.

Pentium hopes to greatly improve the performance of traditional products through the application of graphene in the coating field, so as to improve the market competitiveness. At the same time, graphene coating, as a new material, has a huge market scale and potential value, which helps the company to accelerate the transformation to high-end. It is not difficult to see that many coating enterprises regard graphene as a springboard for the high-end process of enterprises in the market environment of intensified industry competition, low-end product overcapacity and other multiple factors. Can graphene become the springboard of high-end coating enterprises? In fact, graphene has the potential to promote high-end enterprises. Graphene, as a new nano material with the thinnest, strong strength and strong conductivity, has a very far-reaching application prospect in conductive coating, anticorrosive coating, flame retardant coating, thermal conductive coating and high-strength coating with its superior performance. In recent years, graphene industry has been growing rapidly. According to the statistics of China's graphene industry technology innovation strategic alliance, the market scale of China's graphene industry in 2015 was only 600 million yuan, which has increased to 7 billion yuan in 2017, with an average annual compound growth rate of more than 200%. Among them, the scale of graphene in the new energy field reached 5 billion yuan, and the scale of graphene coating reached 800 million yuan.

With the continuous innovation of graphene technology and the continuous maturity of downstream applications, the market scale of graphene will still show a high-speed development trend. It is predicted that by 2020, the market scale of graphene in China will be 10 billion. In addition, the standards and specifications of graphene products are constantly improved. Since the establishment of the graphene standardization work promotion group, the top-level design has been strengthened, the pre research work of relevant national standards of graphene has been started, and the formulation of 8 national standards, such as terms and definitions of graphene materials, optical method to determine the number of graphene layers, and graphene zinc powder coating, has been accelerated. Among the eight graphene international standards initiated by the international organization for standardization nanotechnology Committee (ISO / TC229) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC / tc113), Chinese experts participated in the formulation of two of them. China and the UK also set up a China UK graphene Standardization Cooperation Working Group, and started substantive cooperation in the field of graphene standardization research in the UK. In addition, Guangxi has issued five local standards of graphene series, including "testing and characterization methods of graphene 3D structured powder materials", "terms and definitions of graphene 3D structured powder materials". With the increase of national attention to graphene and the continuous introduction of policy dividend, the industrialization process of domestic graphene anti-corrosion coating is speeding up, and the technology of graphene coating is constantly breaking through.

Coating enterprises will bring new opportunities for innovation and upgrading of enterprises by entering graphene in advance and arranging high-end development of coatings. However, there are still huge obstacles in the development of graphene coating. Although the application of graphene in coating industry is no longer rare, and it has been industrialized in some fields, most of the products still use graphene to combine with the original materials to improve the product performance, with relatively low technical threshold, serious homogenization phenomenon, and lack of breakthrough in key technologies. This is likely to Lead to the low independent innovation ability of enterprises, low-end products rush into the market, and high-end products are not involved enough. Secondly, as a new material, graphene is not highly recognized in the market and needs more initial investment. However, many small and medium-sized enterprises are limited by funds, talents and other factors, so it is difficult to achieve long-term and sustainable investment. Although the relevant systems are constantly improving, the graphene industry in China is still blank in downstream application, product certification, testing, use standards, etc., and there is no uniform industry standards and technical specifications for different fields. For the long-term development of graphene industry, we need correct and active guidance of policies, and more in-depth exploration of enterprises in product production, technology research and development, process innovation, etc. Yan Yongjiang, Secretary General of China Coating Industry Association, once mentioned in the interview of Huicong Coating Net's "Huisheng" series of articles, "enterprises should actively contact and understand the development of new industrial technology and new materials, and apply them to products, so as to make new breakthroughs in technology. The emergence of new materials will be a breakthrough for coating enterprises. Enterprises should use good technology and materials to improve their products. " The "young" graphene brings more possibilities to the coating industry, and we also expect the coating enterprises to bring more surprises to the industry.