Tiangang's Pesticide-Resistant Light Stabilizer: The Only Additive Formulation Meeting Requirements, at an Internationally Leading Level

On December 14-15, 2021, the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Agricultural Plastic Products Branch of the China Society of Agricultural Plastics Application Technology was held in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. Centering on the national purposes of governing plastic pollution and advocating a circular economy, the meeting exchanged new technologies, new materials, new equipment and new processes in the functionalization, lightweighting, precision, ecologization and automation of agricultural films. The venue was filled with a warm atmosphere and brilliant technical reports; of particular interest to the industry was the report by Ms. Qin Lijie, Senior Engineer and Secretary-General of the society, on the one-and-a-half-year field experiment of Xichang grape-specific films organized by the society.

Photo: Ms. Qin Lijie, Senior Engineer and Secretary-General of the Agricultural Film Society, sharing the report

Xichang has a large area of grape-film cultivation and consumes a huge quantity of agricultural film. However, pesticide use in the region is relatively heavy - especially lime sulfur mixture and the like - with spraying exceeding 20 times per grape growing season, which severely affects the service life of greenhouse films made with conventional light stabilizers. To address this, at the end of 2019 the Agricultural Film Society organized a batch field-application trial specifically for grape-specific films used under the harsh conditions of the Xichang region. To date the films have been under cover for 18 months, and the results show:

1. Among the seven hindered-amine samples tested, only T-69 + HS-625 still met the standard after 1.5 years under cover; the other five (three types of 119, T-68, and XT100) had retention rates already below 50%, reaching the end of their service life. 2. The performance of hindered-amine T-68 improved markedly after the addition of hydrotalcite and met the standard. Whether the acid-absorbing effect of HTP has general significance still needs more data to support. 3. Changing the antioxidant had no obvious effect on weatherability; changing the anti-dripping agent had a clear effect, but the reason why the variation of anti-dripping-agent types extends weatherability also requires detailed analysis and data accumulation to reach a clear conclusion.

Based on these experimental results, Engineer Qin stated: 'Agricultural-film producers should no longer blindly trust foreign products; domestically developed pesticide-resistant light stabilizers have reached an internationally leading level.'

Photo: Lime sulfur mixture residue on grapes; heavy use of lime sulfur mixture causes conventional light stabilizers to fail

For three decades, Tiangang has consistently upheld the philosophy of independent innovation and devoted itself to the R&D and application of new light stabilizers, successively launching a number of high-level new additive products with independent intellectual property rights and winning multiple awards for scientific and technological progress and patents. Tiangang(R) HS-625, Tiangang(R) T-68 and Tiangang(R) T-69 are all new-generation pesticide-resistant light stabilizers independently developed by Tiangang. Since their launch they have been widely used in southern watermelon films, grape films, Yunnan flower films and other fields, delivering outstanding weatherability and acid resistance that have won high praise from customers.

Beijing Tiangang Auxiliary Co., Ltd. is a leading enterprise in China's light-stabilizer products field. Founded in 1991, it has long focused on the R&D of polymer-material weather-resistant anti-aging technologies and the production of related additive products. Its headquarters and R&D center are located in the Daxing District of Beijing, and it has modern production bases in the national-level chemical industrial park of Cangzhou City and in Gu'an County, Hebei Province. It is a national high-tech enterprise, a vice-chairman unit of the China Plastics Processing Industry Association, and a Beijing specialized, sophisticated, distinctive and innovative little-giant enterprise. Tiangang's Beijing R&D center has been awarded the titles of Beijing Municipal Enterprise Technology Center, China Light Industry Plastics Products Weathering Engineering Technology Research Center and China Plastics Products Weathering Technology Laboratory, and has won the First Prize of the Ministry of Education's Science and Technology Progress Award and the Second Prize of the Light Industry Federation's Science and Technology Progress Award, among others. It can assist customers with comprehensive weathering-related technology R&D evaluation and testing.

Photo: At the opening ceremony of the conference, Mr. Liu Jie, Chairman of Tiangang Group, presided over the meeting