Kunlun Lubricants: Innovation-Driven, Fueling China's High-Speed Rail

After the G65 train, operated by a Chinese standard EMU and carrying passengers, pulled out of Beijing West Railway Station, it marked the first commercial operation of the CRH-0207 model "Blue Dolphin", an EMU with a purely Chinese pedigree. The "Blue Dolphin" is a prototype of China's independently designed and developed Chinese standard EMU, and the matching EMU gearbox lubricant also comes from Kunlun Lubricants, which was independently developed by PetroChina. After winning the second-class National Technology Invention Award in 2009, the Kunlun gear oil R&D team once again built on independent R&D technology to achieve innovation-driven progress and help fuel China's high-speed rail.
China's high-speed rail EMU technology was mainly introduced from countries with well-developed high-speed railways such as Japan, France and Germany. These countries started R&D on gearbox lubricants for high-speed rail EMUs very early, and their matching lubricant brands had already formed a monopoly. As the core component of high-speed rail traction power, the gearbox mostly used oil products specified directly by the foreign side, and many technologies such as oil change intervals, compatibility of the oil with the gearbox and oil storage were also directly designated by the foreign side. China had no voice and no substitute products in this technical field, which seriously restricted the absorption and localization of the high-speed rail technology China had introduced.
Rail transit equipment is one of the ten key fields for development under "Made in China 2025". "Made in China 2025" proposes that emerging industries and technologies represented by high-speed rail should lead China's industrial transformation and upgrading. As the "first calling card" of China's high-end manufacturing going global, China's high-speed rail must compete with global rail transit giants on brand and quality, and also shoulders the important task of leading China's real economy manufacturing from "big to strong". In order to change the situation in which gearbox lubricants for China's high-speed rail EMUs were monopolized by foreign oils, and to advance the absorption and localization of the introduced high-speed rail technology, developing matching oil products with independent intellectual property rights was an urgent task.
In 2013, Kunlun Lubricants cooperated with the technology center of CRRC Qingdao Sifang Locomotive & Rolling Stock Co., Ltd. and the PetroChina-Beijing Jiaotong University Joint Laboratory to develop gearbox lubricants for high-speed rail EMUs, carrying out independent research and development work on the platform of the CNPC Key Laboratory for Gear Oils (a relatively advanced and complete platform for gear oil research in China). Extreme-pressure anti-wear additive technology is the key core technology in gear oil development; every generational upgrade of gear oil has been realized through scientific optimization and compounding research based on breakthroughs in extreme-pressure anti-wear additive technology.
For many years, Kunlun Lubricants has consistently adhered to independent research and development; it has synthesized more than 200 phosphorus-containing anti-wear additives of different structures, ultimately achieving independent development and industrial scale-up of a single additive and successfully applying it in compound formulations, breaking the foreign technology monopoly. After two years of formulation research and a full set of bench verification by manufacturers of high-speed rail gearboxes and bearings, Kunlun KRG75W-80 gearbox lubricant for high-speed rail EMUs was successfully developed and one Chinese patent was obtained.
In October 2016, Kunlun KRG75W-80 high-speed rail EMU gearbox lubricant successively completed 600,000-kilometre on-board assessment tests on two train models at speeds of 250 km/h and 350 km/h as well as on China's first standard EMU. This was the first on-board assessment of Kunlun gear oil in the high-speed rail field, and also the first time Kunlun gear oil had passed an on-board assessment test over such a long mileage; oil monitoring and final gearbox inspection verified the excellent performance of Kunlun gear oil and broke the foreign oil monopoly on high-speed rail EMU gearboxes. The high-speed rail EMU gearbox lubricant became the first oil product in China with an independent formulation, providing technical support for China's high-speed rail to take part in international bidding.
Kunlun Lubricants has always taken raising the level of lubrication in China as its mission, emphasizing innovation-driven development and insisting on providing professional lubricant products, supporting the development of national industry and, as always, contributing its strength to realizing the dream of a strong China.