By Transferring Technology to Chemtros
The Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) announced on March 13 that it has signed a contract to transfer the technology to manufacture PVDF, an essential material of secondary batteries and solar cells, to Chemtros.
PVDF is widely used in a variety of industrial fields as a cathode material for electric vehicle’s secondary battery, solar cell film, and water intake separator membrane, owning to its excellent weather resistance and stain resistance that help it withstand various external environments.
The technology transferred to Chemtros is a process technology for manufacturing PVDF, which is a type of fluorine resin. KRICT developed a manufacturing technology to produce VDF monomer through pyrolysis and purification of a raw material and another technology that turns PVDF into polymer througha polymerization process of combining VDF.
In particular, the technology allows manufacture of VDF with a high purity of 98.5 percent by preventing most of the impurities in the pyrolysis process of producing VDF from the raw material.
Until now, Korea depended all of the PVDF production on imports because it did not have PVDF manufacturing process technology.
"While the PVDF market is monopolized by few companies, including Solvay in Belgium, Arkema in France and Kureha in Japan, we are now ready to enter the market through PVDF commercialization with our own technology," Kim said. “I hope a plant for commercialization will be constructed and operated in the future to establish independence of the fluorine material and the domestic self-supply."
Meanwhile, the amount of domestic PVDF annual imports has reached 100 billion won (US$88.4 million).