Sinopec and Xiangjiang Paint join hands to jointly tackle the development of high-performance anti-corrosion coatings

On April 24, 2025, Hunan's first joint R&D center for high-performance anti-corrosion coatings was unveiled in Changsha. Jointly established by Sinopec Hunan Petrochemical Co., Ltd. and Xiangjiang Coatings Technology Co., Ltd., the center will collaborate across production, sales, research, and application to further develop high-performance anti-corrosion coatings needed by the petrochemical industry and other sectors, addressing the "pain point" of coating durability for energy storage tanks and other products. Yan Gang, General Manager of Sinopec Hunan Petrochemical Co., Ltd., and Xu Yin, Chairman of Xiangjiang Coatings Group and General Manager of Xiangjiang Coatings Technology Co., Ltd., attended the event.

Energy and chemical companies operate in environments characterized by high salt and alkalinity. Under these conditions, typical tank coatings on the market have a lifespan of only one to two years. Damage to the coating necessitates recoating, resulting in high production costs and a waste of resources. According to statistics, direct economic losses from corrosion in my country reached 4.02 trillion yuan in 2024, accounting for 3% of the national GDP.

"The key to high-performance anti-corrosion coatings lies in the corrosion resistance of the primer," explained Liu Shengfei, Technical Director of Xiangjiang Coatings Technology Co., Ltd. The R&D center will leverage Hunan Petrochemical's base epoxy resin, combined with Xiangjiang Coatings' graphene and polyaniline application technologies, to optimize the primer structure and enhance its anti-corrosion performance. The center will then utilize polysiloxane and polyurea coating technologies to create topcoats, aiming to develop anti-corrosion coatings that can withstand high-salt and high-alkali environments for over 15 years. Furthermore, the center will jointly develop water-based epoxy heavy-duty anti-corrosion coatings and special-performance heavy-duty epoxy coatings. Furthermore, the center will establish standardized coating processes and evaluation systems for high-performance anti-corrosion coatings for various applications, such as petrochemical equipment, pipelines, and offshore engineering, to ensure the coatings applied to the products achieve their intended effects.

It is understood that Xiangjiang Paint Group was founded in 1950. Its core business is the research and development, production, sales and coating of coatings and resins. It is one of the top ten coatings companies in China and the only Chinese company to enter the top 20 global industrial coatings. It has national laboratories, provincial technical centers and an industry-university-research center jointly built with Hunan University. It also actively cooperates with foreign scientific research institutions. Its self-developed heavy-duty anti-corrosion coatings are currently widely used in steel structures, bridges, chemical equipment, marine facilities, oil pipelines and other fields. Representative projects include Xinglian Road Grand Passage, Lanzhou Olympic Sports Center, etc.