In Yantai High-tech Zone, there is such an enterprise, which has been deeply engaged in the field of fluid machinery equipment for more than 20 years, with the mission of “breaking the foreign monopoly”, and “blazed a trai” on the road of technological innovation with hard-core technologies. It is a national high-tech enterprise-Yantai Longgang Pump Industry Co., Ltd. From “follower” to “leader”, every step of Longgang Pump Industry is engraved with the power of innovation, and it is also a vivid portrayal of Yantai High-tech Zone’s adherence to the development concept of “building the zone with science and technology and strengthening the zone with industry”.
Break through the bottleneck of core technologies and be a “game changer” of domestic substitution
As a Class A supplier of central enterprises such as Sinopec and PetroChina, and a backbone force in the domestic substitution of energy equipment, Longgang Pump Industry has always regarded “solving the problem of core technology being controlled by others” as a strategic fulcrum, focusing on the “stuck neck” field to achieve technological breakthroughs. Faced with the technical monopoly of international giants such as Japan’s Ebara and Switzerland’s Sulzer in the field of carbon dioxide pipeline booster pumps and vertical shielded pumps, Longgang Pump Industry did not retreat.
The company formed an innovation consortium with Shandong University and Zhejiang Sci-Tech University to tackle the key equipment in the field of CCUS (carbon capture, utilization and storage) – carbon dioxide pipeline booster pumps. After three months of collaborative operations, the company successfully overcame technical bottlenecks such as composite drag reduction on the impeller surface and ultra-deep cold grinding of long pump shafts. The efficiency, vibration value and other indicators exceeded foreign competitors, and domestic equipment was used on a large scale for the first time in a 100-kilometer CO2 pipeline, and more than 800,000 tons of CO2 have been transported.
The company has successively won the “Second Prize of Shandong Science and Technology Progress Award” and the first Shandong Provincial Technical Equipment (Set) Certification and other honors. The petrochemical market share in the province has reached 32%, and its products cover high-end fields such as nuclear power, environmental protection, and aerospace.
Create an industry-university-research innovation consortium and build a “strong ecology” for collaborative research
The innovative gene of Longgang Pump Industry stems from its development concept of “open cooperation”. The company adopts a flexible mode of attracting talents of “not for ownership, but for use”, gathers experts with special government allowances from the State Council, Yangtze River Scholars, and blue industry leaders, etc., to form the “strongest brain” for technical decision-making; independently trains 4 senior engineers and 6 intermediate engineers, and innovatively implements the “school-enterprise dual mentor system”, and builds a joint postgraduate training base with Shandong University, Yantai University and other universities to achieve “self-generation” of talent supply.
Longgang Pump Industry conducts in-depth industry-university-research cooperation with universities in the mode of “enterprise questions, university questions, and market verification”. It has currently produced 38 invention patents and participated in the formulation of 5 national standards. For example, in the research and development of CCUS booster pumps, Shandong University is responsible for low-temperature and high-pressure rotor dynamics analysis, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University builds flow field simulation models, and the company leads engineering design and testing. The three parties complement each other’s advantages to achieve seamless connection from “laboratory results” to “industrial application”.
Prospective layout of strategic emerging fields, opening up a “new chapter” in industrial development
Innovation never stops. In order to solve the “bottleneck” problem of my country’s development of advanced nuclear energy technology and industrialization of key equipment – high-temperature liquid metal circulation pumps have long been trapped by technical barriers such as corrosion failure of flow components, short life, high vibration and noise, and poor reliability, Longgang Pump Industry has joined forces with Shandong University, China Academy of Science Neutron Energy and other scientific research forces to carry out key technical research on corrosion mechanisms, vibration reduction and noise reduction systems.
It is expected to develop low-noise and long-life pump products, build a production line with an annual output of 100 sets, form a multiplier effect of “developing a technology, driving an industry, and radiating a chain”, and realize demonstration applications in advanced nuclear energy, high-temperature energy storage and other fields. Through technological breakthroughs and industrial layout, Longgang Pump Industry will continue to fill domestic gaps, drive the formation of a high-end manufacturing industry chain, and provide core equipment support for Yantai to build a 100 billion-level nuclear energy industry cluster and achieve the “dual carbon” goal.
“Core technology cannot be obtained by begging or buying.” The innovative path of Longgang Pump Industry, from breaking the foreign monopoly to leading the industry standards, from single technology research to the whole industry chain collaboration, from “technological breakthrough” to “industrial radiation”, is the epitome of my country’s small and medium-sized technology enterprises becoming technology leaders. Under the “precision irrigation” of the good science and technology innovation ecology created by Yantai High-tech Zone for a long time, this high-tech enterprise is using science and technology as a pen and innovation as ink to write more “Chinese creation” legends in the field of high-end equipment manufacturing, making “Chinese pumps” a shining business card on the world stage.
