Vitamin E, also known as tocopherol, is an organic compound with extremely wide uses. In medicine, vitamin E can be used as an intracellular antioxidant to treat a variety of diseases. In the food industry, vitamin E can be used as a preservative.
Additives and can also be used as nutritional enhancers.
In the feed industry, vitamin E is an important additive that can help livestock and poultry immunity, improve meat quality, increase egg production, etc. According to statistics, vitamin E used in the feed industry accounts for about half of global production. In addition, vitamin e
It can also be used as a cosmetic additive and as an antioxidant for plastics.
The production of vitamin E includes synthetic methods and natural extraction methods. The natural vitamin E produced by the latter is more expensive, but the output is limited, so the main production method is the synthetic method.
The principle of synthesizing vitamin E is very simple. It uses two intermediates, namely trimethylhydroquinone and isophytol, to synthesize under the action of a catalyst.
Now that the principle is in place, the next step is process flow design and process equipment manufacturing, and the specific process flow is related to one of the factors, which is the catalyst used in the synthesis.
From the 1970s to the 1980s, it was a peak in the research on vitamin E synthesis technology. Foreign pharmaceutical manufacturers developed new synthesis processes one after another. The main difference was the choice of catalyst. According to literature, the catalysts proposed during this period included chlorination.
Zinc, aluminum trichloride, aluminum silicate, p-toluenesulfonic acid, boron trifluoride, etc., there are dozens of them.
The paper published by Liao Derong that Gao Fan mentioned was exactly a discussion of catalysts for the synthesis of vitamin E. In that paper, Liao Derong proposed the idea of using compounds containing rare earth elements as catalysts, and gave some experimental results.
It shows that rare earth catalysts have certain advantages.
Liao Derong's original intention of writing this article was actually quite accidental. In his early years, he had worked in a pharmaceutical company outside the province and was exposed to the synthesis of vitamin E. After coming to Maolin Province, because Maolin is a major province of rare earths, the Chemical Engineering Design Institute
There have always been research projects on rare earth catalysts, mainly the application of rare earth catalysts in the petrochemical industry.
Liao Derong also had an idea, or to put it more tackily, he did some research on using rare earths as a catalyst for the synthesis of vitamin E, and he published a paper and submitted it to the design institute.
It can be considered a bit of scientific research workload.
As for subsequent 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 Fertilizer Factory develop a rare earth ammonia synthesis catalyst. In order to find some cover for his golden finger, he checked many domestic journals and accidentally saw this paper by Liao Derong. As a result, he remembered something that happened in later generations.
thing.
In the early 1990s, a Japanese pharmaceutical company launched a new vitamin E production process using commercially available compounds as catalysts. It not only increased the synthesis efficiency by nearly 10%, but also reduced the requirements for equipment. It was a major breakthrough in the vitamin E production process.
improvement.
After the release of this new technology, a Chinese scholar wrote an article stating that the Japanese technology was copied from China. The evidence is this paper published by Liao Derong more than ten years ago.
This kind of accusation, of course, is just a verbal dispute, which has no substantive effect. Instead, it is occasionally cited by scholars to prove the rigidity of China's scientific research system, or to prove the "craftsmanship" of Japanese companies.
Real insiders have a relatively objective view on this scandal. Everyone believes that the Japanese craftsmanship has little to do with Liao Derong's discovery.
First, it is a very common practice to use rare earth elements as catalysts for chemical synthesis. It is entirely possible for the Japanese to independently discover the role of rare earth elements in the synthesis of vitamin E.
Secondly, the magazine "Maolin Chemical Industry" is not really a well-known publication. This magazine is an official publication of the Maolin Provincial Department of Chemical Industry. Its main content is to publish leadership speeches and work updates, as well as some exchanges of experiences.
There is even a supplement section that occasionally publishes a few limericks written by literary enthusiasts in the industry.
This kind of magazine still has some influence in the domestic industry. After all, every province has such publications, and then they will conduct "commercial mutual subscriptions", so everyone in the chemical industry circle knows about it. But you want to say that a Japanese chemical company has come to such a place?
It is a bit natural to plagiarize any invention or creation in a publication.
When Gao Fan thought of this incident, he just sighed and felt regretful. Things like this are really rare in this era. Liao Derong's discovery is still some way away from industrial application and cannot be patented.
To the point where, unless a company is willing to invest in research and development, there is simply no way to prevent others from developing new processes in more than ten years.
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 the new vitamin E process came to his mind again.
Vitamins are a big market, and vitamin E does not account for a large proportion of it, but it is still worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Specifically, the total global demand for vitamin E is about 8,000 tons, and the price of vitamin E per kilogram is
It is 40 US dollars. Multiplying the two numbers equals 320 million US dollars. This number is currently growing at an annual rate of 10% to 15%.
China's current vitamin E production is less than 100 tons. Not only is it unable to export, it also needs to import a portion of vitamin E every year to meet domestic market demand.
There are two reasons why China's vitamin E production is not high. First, the two main raw materials for synthesizing vitamin E, trimethylhydroquinone and isophytol, cannot be produced domestically. Or, to be precise, it is because the technical level is low and domestically produced
The output of trimethylhydroquinone and isophytol is extremely low, and the cost is higher than that of imports. The second reason is that the production equipment for synthetic vitamin E also has a certain technical content and cannot be manufactured domestically, so it also depends on imports.
In this era, there are so many industries with shortcomings in the country. The production of vitamin E is not really 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.
In the context of steel, urea, ethylene and other important products that have not yet achieved self-sufficiency, isn't it a joke that you talk about the problem of vitamin E being choked by foreign countries?
The country had no time to pay attention to this small product, but Gao Fan was 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 was the first to develop this process, using cheap vitamin E.
Wouldn’t it be nice to seize the international market and take a big piece of the US$320 million pie?