Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of Huang Weiyuan's Birth丨The needs of the country are my subject

Academician Huang Weiyuan: The needs of the country are my subject

Original Collection Project Chinese Scientists 2021-05-18 19:00

In 1964, my country successfully detonated an atomic bomb. This was achieved through the day and night efforts of scientists. Among them, one scientist gave up his research on steroid chemistry and natural product chemistry, which he loved and focused on for nearly ten years, for the needs of the country, and turned to the research of borohydride chemistry, organic fluorine chemistry and fluorine-containing materials, realizing the development of fluorine chemistry in my country from scratch and making great contributions to my country's national defense. He is Huang Weiyuan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an organic chemist, and one of the founders of Chinese organic fluorine chemistry.

Huang Weiyuan (Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences official website)

In 1958, the "Two Bombs and One Satellite" project officially kicked off. The raw material for making atomic bombs is uranium-235, and how to extract it from ore became a major challenge facing the project. The refining process has extremely high requirements for lubricating oil, which needs to have a lubricating effect and prevent it from burning in high-speed friction.

At that time, my country had no idea how to prepare this lubricant, and even its composition was unknown. Traditional lubricants are grease compounds, which are flammable and easy to decompose, and cannot meet the requirements of national defense. It is urgent to carry out research on organic fluorine chemistry and fluorine-containing materials.

The research and development of lubricating oil was first carried out by the Ministry of Petroleum. However, due to the weak research foundation of fluorine chemistry in China, the Ministry of Petroleum still failed to develop a sample after some efforts.

Huang Weiyuan took a photo at the Tiananmen viewing platform in 1959

Since the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences had a certain research foundation in fluorine-containing materials, in 1960, the task of developing fluorine-containing lubricants was transferred to the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry and named "Task 111" - meaning that this was the first and most urgent task. Huang Weiyuan was appointed as the person in charge of "Task 111" and shifted the research direction from borohydride chemistry to fluorine chemistry.

After the Soviet Union withdrew its experts, materials, and equipment from China, in order to obtain samples of lubricating oil, Chinese scientists could only remove the lubricating oil adhering to the original machine bit by bit as precious experimental samples. After obtaining the sample, Huang Weiyuan used the only infrared spectrometer in the institute to analyze its structure.

The project members were not familiar with the instrument operation and spectrum analysis of infrared spectroscopy. Huang Weiyuan gave lectures to carefully explain to everyone how to use them so as to give full play to the role of infrared spectroscopy in performing national defense tasks.

In 1962, Huang Weiyuan and his colleagues from the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry took a group photo in front of the institute’s gate (Huang Weiyuan is the fourth from the right in the second row)

In order to save time, he conducted infrared spectroscopy analysis while attending classes. In less than a month, he made an important discovery: there were no carbon bonds in the lubricating oil sample, which led him to speculate that the oil was a perfluorinated carbon compound, namely perfluorocarbon oil.

After analyzing the structure of the lubricating oil, Huang Weiyuan continued to study day and night to try to synthesize the lubricating oil. In less than a year, he and other researchers found the right oil variety, explored good fluorination conditions, and finally developed fluorinated oil that met more than a dozen technical indicators such as the sample oil composition and performance.

In 1965, the "Liquid Phase Method for the Production of Perfluoro Oil" won the National Invention Award.

In October 1964, China's first atomic bomb exploded successfully. The lubricating oil developed under Huang Weiyuan's leadership played an important role. From the time they accepted the task in 1960, within just three years, Huang Weiyuan's team completed the entire process of developing, pilot testing, and expanding production of fluorinated oil, successfully completing the national task.

In 1980, Huang Weiyuan was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the face of national needs, he took the needs of the country as his own subject, willingly gave up his existing career and devoted himself to the cause of fluorine chemistry, making important contributions to my country's national defense and people's livelihood.

Note:

① Steroids are a class of natural chemical components that are widely present in nature, including plant sterols, bile acids, C21 steroids, insect allergens, cardiac glycosides, steroidal saponins, steroidal alkaloids, and toad venom glycosides.

② Hydroboration reaction, one of the important organic synthesis reactions. Borane, which is dissociated from diborane in an ether solution, adds B-H bonds to the unsaturated bonds of alkenes and alkynes to generate organic boron compounds.

③Organic fluorine compounds, especially perfluorinated compounds, have some unusual and even very special physical and chemical properties. They are used in many scientific fields from pharmaceutical chemistry to materials science. Fluorine is a non-metallic chemical element and a key element in special plastics, rubber and refrigerators (chlorofluorocarbons). Due to the special chemical properties of fluorine, fluorine chemistry has an important position in the history of chemical development.

Huang Weiyuan

(December 1921-November 2015)

Organic Chemist

Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Text: Collection Project Office/China Association for Science and Technology Innovation Strategy Institute

References:

[1] Zhu Jing, Huang Zhijing. Humble and Modest: A Biography of Huang Weiyuan[M]. Shanghai Jiaotong University Press. 2015.

[2] Image source: Senior Scientists Academic Growth Data Collection Project, Chinese Scientists Museum (online version)

Source: Chinese Scientists