High-purity 4M1P put into production; Sinopec Zhenhai Refining & Chemical achieves domestic mass production of ECMO core raw materials

Recently, Sinopec Zhenhai Refining & Chemical Company (hereinafter referred to as "Zhenhai Refining") announced a major scientific and technological breakthrough: the enterprise has independently achieved stable mass production of the high-end medical-grade new material 4-methyl-1-pentene (4M1P). The product purity is stably maintained at over 98%, with core quality surpassing similar imported international products.

This move marks China's complete end to the decades-long exclusive monopoly of Japanese enterprises on high-purity 4M1P. It successfully overcomes the "stranglehold" problem regarding the core raw material for ECMO artificial lungs, achieving independent controllability of key materials for severe critical care medicine.

As core equipment in the field of critical care rescue, the ECMO artificial lung is a key medical device for saving the lives of patients with cardiopulmonary failure. Its core component, the oxygenating membrane, is based on PMP specialty resin, and 4M1P is an indispensable core monomer for synthesizing PMP resin. The material performance directly determines the first-aid effect and safety of ECMO equipment. Previously, only Japanese companies globally possessed mature industrial production technology for high-purity 4M1P, monopolizing the high-end market. China's medical-grade 4M1P was completely dependent on imports, resulting in high procurement costs and a supply chain highly susceptible to international market fluctuations, which became a core shortcoming restricting the development of the domestic high-end medical equipment industry.

To solve the puzzle of localizing high-end medical materials and build a security barrier for the national medical industry chain and supply chain, Zhenhai Refining leveraged its own advantages in high-end new material R&D and industrial production. It formed a special task force with Sinopec Ningbo Institute of New Materials and Dalian University of Technology to focus on core technical bottlenecks such as propylene定向 dimerization catalysis, precision purification, and stable mass production, carrying out long-term industry-university-research collaborative攻关. The R&D team continuously optimized the production process, iterated the catalytic system, and strictly controlled impurity indicators throughout the production process. Finally, they successfully built a hundred-ton-scale 4M1P dedicated pilot production device and smoothly achieved stable industrial mass production.

According to authoritative testing, the average purity of Zhenhai Refining's petrochemical 4M1P product reaches over 98%, with premium batches reaching up to 99.3%. Core indicators such as purity, stability, and biocompatibility are superior to imported international products, fully meeting the stringent production standards for medical ECMO core membrane materials. Meanwhile, the project has completed full-chain adaptation verification, opening up a complete localization chain from basic chemical raw materials, high-end monomer synthesis, and specialty resin preparation to medical membrane material processing. It can directly provide high-quality raw material support for domestic ECMO manufacturing enterprises.

As a core refining and chemical new material base under Sinopec, Zhenhai Refining has deeply cultivated the fields of high-end fine chemicals and specialty new materials for many years, continuously promoting industrial transformation and upgrading. Relying on strong technical R&D capabilities, a mature industrial production system, and a perfect quality control system, it has successfully developed and put into production dozens of high-end import-substituting new material products, covering strategic emerging fields such as medical, electronics, new energy, and high-end manufacturing. This breakthrough in 4M1P mass production is an important landmark achievement for the enterprise to deeply cultivate the high-end new material track and practice scientific and technological self-reliance.

Industry experts stated that the implementation of domestic mass production of 4M1P not only fills the shortcoming in China's high-end medical specialty material industry chain, breaks overseas technology monopolies and price barriers, effectively reduces domestic ECMO consumable production costs, and enhances the supply guarantee capability of emergency medical equipment, but also marks that China's technical level in the fields of high-end olefin monomer synthesis and medical specialty polymer materials has entered the international advanced ranks.

In the next step, Zhenhai Refining will continue to optimize the 4M1P production process, steadily expand production capacity, and continuously promote product iteration and upgrading to fully meet the large-scale and high-quality development needs of the domestic high-end medical equipment industry. At the same time, the enterprise will continue to focus on tackling "stranglehold" new material technologies, continuously enrich the high-end new material product matrix, assist in the high-quality development of China's two strategic industries of chemical new materials and high-end medical equipment, and fully build a self-reliant and secure barrier for the industrial chain and supply chain.