Eucommia is a unique plant in China, and more than 95% of the world's eucommia resources are in China. "Gutta-percha rubber is not afraid of acid and alkali corrosion, not easy to deformation, waterproof, anti-puncture, anti-radiation. Adding 3%-5% gutta-percha can increase the puncture resistance of the tire and extend the service life of the tire." Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University professor Zhu Mingqiang said.
Recently, Zhu Mingqiang's team has made new breakthroughs in the development and research of gutta-percha functional materials. The research team successfully increased the extraction purity of gutta-percha to more than 99.0%, overcoming the scientific problem of efficient extraction and purification of gutta-percha, and calculated the condition value of good compatibility with nitrile rubber and natural rubber, bringing good news for the development of China's high-end rubber industry. The relevant results were published in the International Biomacromolecules and Industrial Crops and Products, respectively.
China is the world's largest rubber consumer, but the main raw material of rubber, three-leaf rubber, is a tropical plant that has a narrow range of suitable areas in China, and can only be cultivated in Hainan Island and Xishuangbanna. According to incomplete statistics, in 2022, China's natural rubber production is 818,400 tons, the apparent demand is 3,430,300 tons, and the import dependence has exceeded 75% for more than 10 consecutive years.
The hope of breaking the bottleneck of low self-sufficiency rate of natural rubber resources in China is placed on gutta-percha. The unique rubber-plastic duality of gutta-percha makes it increasingly prominent in the field of functional materials and engineering materials. However, the backward extraction and purification technology of gutta-percha has become one of the key problems restricting the production capacity of gutta-percha. "Traditional chemical extraction methods have high cost, low efficiency, poor purity, and solvents pollute the environment. The biological extraction method also has some defects, such as difficult to control the fermentation conditions and difficult to purify the colloid after fermentation." Zhu Mingqiang said.
In order to overcome the purification difficulties of gutta-percha, under the leadership of Zhu Mingqiang, the research team for the first time proposed a new way of clean extraction of gutta-percha by using green low eutectic solvent coupling biological method - lactic acid-zinc chloride solvent system. Compared with the traditional extraction methods such as mechanical grinding and alkali treatment, the extraction efficiency of the new method was greatly improved, and the yield and purity of gutta-percha reached 91.0% and 99.0%, respectively.
Zhu Mingqiang introduced that in addition to reducing the extraction and separation cost of gutta-percha, the problem of insufficient supply of Gutta-percha collagen materials should be solved. Fortunately, in December 2016, the former State Forestry Administration clearly proposed in the National Eucommia Industry Development Plan (2016-2030) that by 2030, China will increase the planting area of Eucommia by 3 million hectares. This document provides a follow-up impetus for the development of the entire Eucommia industry. "If the development scale of 3 million hectares of euperia industrial base can be achieved, the annual output of China's euperia rubber will reach more than 1.2 million tons, 1-2 times the current production of natural rubber in China, which can meet 60% of the demand." Zhu Mingqiang said.
