Grinding a Sword for Ten Years: Kunlun Lubricants Helps Advance the Localization of Wind Turbine Oils

As traditional energy sources are increasingly consumed and global energy supply grows tighter, wind energy, as a renewable green energy source, has become one of the renewable energies with the lowest development cost and the greatest development prospects. The lubricating materials used in wind turbine generator systems have stringent requirements for resistance to micropitting, bearing protection and oil cleanliness. This is especially true of the main gearbox that drives the generator, the heart of a wind turbine's gear transmission box; the gear oil used plays a very important role in ensuring the stable operation of gears and bearings in wind power equipment.
As early as 2006, Kunlun Lubricants developed a series of matching products with independent intellectual property rights in light of the domestic wind power market at that time, and successively carried out three-year service trials on various models of wind turbines, including the Gamesa 850 kW generating units at the Ningxia Helan Mountain Wind Power Plant, the Gamesa 850 kW units at Gansu Jieyuan Wind Power, the Bonus MK 600 kW units at Fujian Dongshan Aozishan Wind Power and Gansu Yumen Wind Power. The oil performance fully met the lubrication requirements of wind turbine equipment and obtained technical recognition from the above OEMs.
Since 2010, wind turbine technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, with wind turbine generator systems developing from the kilowatt level to the megawatt level, placing more stringent requirements on gear oils in terms of extreme pressure performance, micropitting resistance and bearing protection. Kunlun Lubricants has always paid close attention to the development of China's wind power industry, based itself on independent research and development, and upgraded its special gear oil for wind power equipment in response to market changes. Using the platform of the CNPC Key Laboratory for Gear Oils, it successively introduced several sets of internationally advanced performance evaluation test machines from Germany and Sweden, further consolidating the hardware foundation for independent formulation research and establishing a full set of industrial gear oil benches for evaluating the highest international specification requirements for wind power gear oils. After devoted research and hundreds of repeated tests, it broke through the previous gear oil formulation system that used sulfurized isobutylene as the main agent and successfully developed a wind power gear oil product with performance comparable to top foreign products, obtaining one Chinese granted patent (patent number ZL201110116526.2) and one US granted patent (patent number US 9,347,016 B2).
At present, China's wind power industry is developing rapidly, and a complete industrial chain bearing the "Made in China" label has been formed from wind turbine parts to complete machines and grid-connection related equipment. In China's almost complete wind power industrial chain, wind power lubricants, as gearbox components, have become a rare link in which local players are absent; some in the industry even say that wind power lubricant is the only part of the wind power industrial chain that has not been localized. In fact, from the very beginning of China's wind power industry development, the country mainly relied on introduced technology, and complete machine manufacturers mainly followed gearbox manufacturers' recommendations when choosing wind turbine lubricants, with some well-known international lubricant brands seizing the wind turbine "factory-fill" market early. However, when domestic wind power operators purchased imported wind turbine gear oils, problems such as high prices keeping production costs high and long supply cycles gradually became prominent, and some enterprises began to look to domestic lubricant manufacturers.
Beijing Jingneng New Energy Company, an important platform for new energy projects of the Jingneng Group, one of China's top 500 enterprises, is a well-known enterprise engaged in the investment, development, construction and operation management of wind, solar and other new energy projects. While most companies were still cautiously continuing to use imported wind power gear oils, this company had already recognized the urgency and feasibility of localizing wind turbine gearbox lubricants. Kunlun Lubricants' R&D strength in the field of gear lubricants drew great attention from Beijing Jingneng New Energy Company, and after a series of technical exchanges between the two sides, the new energy company chose to cooperate with PetroChina's lubricant company, which has long-term technical accumulation in the domestic lubricant R&D field, becoming the first in China's wind power industry to use a domestic oil on megawatt-class wind turbines.
The project chose the Keyouzhong Wind Farm as the pilot unit. Located in Hinggan League, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the farm has an average temperature of 6.1 °C, an extreme maximum temperature of 40.5 °C and an extreme minimum temperature of -30.9 °C. The gearboxes of the farm's 1.5 MW wind turbines had their oil changed at the same time, with 8 turbines using Kunlun FD3000N special gear oil for wind power equipment. Continuous monitoring of the 1.5 MW wind turbine gearboxes using Kunlun wind power gear oil found that the DE-side/NDE-side bearing temperatures and average gear oil temperatures of gearboxes using Kunlun lubricants were comparable to those using foreign competing products, and in individual cases even lower than the competing products. Moreover, oil testing by the third-party Guangzhou Mechanical Engineering Research Institute Co., Ltd. found that in terms of viscosity, acid value, pour point, copper strip corrosion and spectral element analysis, Kunlun wind power gear oil performed comparably to foreign brand oils, with lower wear metal content than the competing products.
Recently, the "Jingneng New Energy Company Wind Turbine Gearbox Lubricant Localization Substitution Project Final Acceptance Report Meeting", hosted by Beijing Jingneng Group and organized by Jingneng New Energy Company, was successfully held at the new energy company. Experts from Shenyang University of Technology, North China Electric Power University, Yanshan Yulong Petrochemical and other fields spoke highly of the gear oil localization project and affirmed the significance and demonstration effect for the entire domestic wind power sector of the new energy company being the first enterprise in China to carry out a gear oil localization substitution project. Localized wind power gear oil can save wind farms about 30% in costs; the project promoted the localization development of wind power enterprises and enhanced the market competitiveness of national brands. In particular, the independent formulation used by Kunlun's special gear oil for wind power equipment solved the problems of anti-wear and friction characteristics as well as the contradiction between anti-friction and anti-oxidation, earning unanimous recognition from the experts.
Grinding a sword for ten years: Kunlun wind power oil has been successfully applied for the first time on megawatt-class wind turbine generator systems, breaking the long-standing monopoly of foreign brands in the wind power market and marking an important step forward for Kunlun wind power gear oil in market development. Kunlun Lubricants has consistently adhered to an independent innovation development model, tirelessly devoted to the localization of wind turbines, contributing its share to the independence of national industry and demonstrating the responsibility and commitment of a large central state-owned enterprise.
In the future, in the face of the complex and changeable domestic market, Kunlun Lubricants will continue to uphold the two core directions of brand development and independent innovation, pay close attention to cooperation and exchanges with wind power enterprises, grow together with customers and thereby further promote wider application of independent innovation achievements.