With the rapid development of domestic industry in recent years, heat transfer oil, as a high-temperature heat transfer medium under normal pressure, has become increasingly widely used in the industrial field. At the same time, its important role in industrial production cannot be ignored. The quality of heat transfer oil directly affects normal production efficiency, and even inferior heat transfer oil may cause accidents.
Many domestic enterprises have long had a misconception about the quality of heat transfer oil, generally believing that imported heat transfer oil is of good quality. Therefore, many companies often consider importing large brand products first when purchasing heat transfer oil. So, is that really the case?
As a leading enterprise in the domestic waterproofing industry, listed company Dongfang Yuhong has encountered such a troublesome issue. Its factory, which invested 1.2 billion yuan to build, had to postpone production for several months due to quality problems with the thermal oil, resulting in indirect economic losses. After multiple unsuccessful communications with the thermal oil manufacturer, Dongfang Yuhong sued them and claimed 20 million yuan in compensation.
The thermal oil used in Dongfang Yuhong's factory located in Tangshan is produced by BP (China) Industrial Oil Products Co., Ltd. BP is one of the world's largest petroleum and petrochemical conglomerates. Dongfang Yuhong purchased 100 tons of TranscalN thermal oil from Beijing Times Belin Electromechanical Equipment Co., Ltd., the authorized agent of BP China, on November 24, 2014 and January 7, 2015, respectively. The good times didn't last long. Dongfang Yuhong conducted a trial run of its first production line on March 16, 2015, but during the trial run, it was discovered that there was a large area of oil leakage in the oil pipeline. After excluding the oil leakage caused by the quality of stainless steel corrugated pipes and valves, Dongfang Yuhong commissioned Shanghai Oil, Gas and Chemicals Standard Technical Service Co., Ltd. to conduct sampling and testing on the heat transfer oil. The results showed that the chlorine content in several batches of heat transfer oil was 55 mg/kg, 94 mg/kg, and 825.4 mg/kg, which seriously exceeded the national standard by several times or even dozens of times.
The excessive chlorine (Cl) element in thermal oil can easily cause intergranular corrosion, pitting corrosion, crevice corrosion and other reactions in pipeline materials at high operating temperatures and certain flow rates, leading to the initial phenomenon of oil leakage. The continuous corrosion ultimately leads to a decrease in the corrosion fatigue performance of stainless steel materials, resulting in severe metal stress corrosion cracking. The higher the chlorine (Cl) content in the heat transfer oil and the higher the temperature, the faster the corrosion of stainless steel by chlorine elements occurs.
BP China has not acknowledged the issue of excessive chlorine content in the heat transfer oil sold to Dongfang Yuhong. Even explaining to users: 'Chlorine content is not a mandatory QC inspection item, whether in BPFusion or in the enterprise standards of the Taicang factory.'. So the factory will not test the chlorine content before releasing the product. Regarding this, the person in charge of Dongfang Yuhong expressed helplessly: "As a globally renowned enterprise, why did Bibi not inform customers and internally block information, repeatedly and firmly denying the existence of quality problems despite knowing that its products had quality issues. At present, the lawsuit between Oriental Yuhong and BP China is still ongoing.
In fact, the chlorine (Cl) content, as an important indicator reflecting the quality of heat transfer oil, is explicitly stipulated in the current national standard GB23971-2009 "Organic Heat Carriers" for heat transfer oil: the chlorine content in heat transfer oil shall not exceed 20mg/kg. However, the internal control indicators for sulfur (S) and chlorine (Cl) content in the thermal oil products of Hanni Chemical, a professional thermal oil manufacturer in China, are even lower than 5 mg/kg, far below the national standards.
From this, it can be seen that choosing a qualified heat transfer oil supplier is very important and necessary for enterprises, which is conducive to maintaining their own interests. After all, "there is a priority in hearing the Tao, and there is a specialization in the field".