Eucommia ulmoides is a unique plant species in China, with over 95% of the world's Eucommia ulmoides resources located in China. "Eucommia ulmoides gum is not afraid of acid and alkali corrosion, is not easy to deform, and is waterproof, puncture resistant, and radiation resistant. Adding 3-5% Eucommia ulmoides gum can increase the puncture resistance of tires and extend their service life," said Professor Zhu Mingqiang from Northwest A&F University. Recently, Zhu Mingqiang's team has made new breakthroughs in the development and research of functional materials for Eucommia ulmoides gum. The research team successfully increased the extraction purity of Eucommia ulmoides gum to over 99.0%, overcoming the scientific challenge of efficient extraction and purification of Eucommia ulmoides gum. They also calculated the condition values for good compatibility between Eucommia ulmoides gum, nitrile rubber, and natural rubber, bringing good news to the development of China's high-end rubber industry. The relevant achievements were recently published in International Biomacromolecules and Industrial Crops and Products. China is the world's largest consumer of rubber, but the main raw material of rubber, three leaf rubber, is a tropical plant. The suitable growing area in China is very narrow and can only be cultivated in Hainan Island and Xishuangbanna. According to incomplete statistics, China's natural rubber production in 2022 was 818400 tons, with an apparent demand of 3.4303 million tons and an import dependency of over 75% for more than 10 consecutive years. The hope of breaking the bottleneck of low self-sufficiency rate of natural rubber resources in our country lies in Eucommia ulmoides gum. The unique rubber plastic duality of Eucommia ulmoides gum makes its application prospects in functional materials and engineering materials increasingly prominent. However, the backward extraction and purification technology of Eucommia ulmoides gum has become one of the key issues restricting the production capacity of Eucommia ulmoides gum in China. "The traditional chemical extraction method has high cost, low efficiency, poor purity, and the solvent also pollutes the environment. The biological extraction method also has defects such as difficult control of fermentation conditions and difficulty in purifying the fermented colloid." Zhu Mingqiang said. In order to overcome the difficulty of purifying Eucommia ulmoides gum, under the leadership of Zhu Mingqiang, the research team proposed for the first time a new approach to clean the extraction of Eucommia ulmoides gum using a green low melting solvent coupled with a biological method - a lactic acid zinc chloride solvent system. Compared with traditional extraction methods such as mechanical crushing and alkaline treatment, the new method significantly improves the extraction efficiency of Eucommia ulmoides gum, with the yield and purity of Eucommia ulmoides gum reaching over 91.0% and 99.0%, respectively. Zhu Mingqiang introduced that in addition to reducing the extraction and separation cost of Eucommia ulmoides gum, it is also necessary to solve the problem of insufficient supply of Eucommia ulmoides collagen materials. Fortunately, in December 2016, the former State Forestry Administration explicitly proposed in the National Eucommia ulmoides Industry Development Plan (2016-2030) that China will add 3 million hectares of Eucommia ulmoides planting area by 2030. This document provides follow-up impetus for the development of the entire Eucommia ulmoides industry. "If the development scale of a 3 million hectare Eucommia ulmoides industry base can be achieved, the annual production of Eucommia ulmoides gum in China will reach more than 1.2 million tons, which is 1-2 times the current natural rubber production in China and can meet 60% of the demand," said Zhu Mingqiang. (Lai Xin She)
Edit：Hu Sen Ming Responsible editor：Li Xi
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