As I mentioned earlier, I work as a research assistant in R&D at Wanhua’s Polyurethanes Company. The R&D is relatively new, it opened around 1.5-2 years ago. There are around 17 research teams, each team consisting of around 4 to 20 people. To simplify the companies work, Production of Polyurethanes (abbreviated PU) follows the basic reaction formula:
Polyols + Di-isocyanate + catalyst = Polyurethanes
Di-isocyanate is almost invariant in all PU production. What varies considerably and what dictates the characteristics or the produced PU is the starting ‘polyol’. This is because polyols exist in limitless variations. A polyol is the starting basic polymer. Some examples are polyols derived from polyether or polyester, and infinitely other combinations can exist.
Some research teams are:
- Polyols team – 5 people (I am working with this team which makes us 6)
- Analysis team – 12 people (Saeed’s Team)
- Catalysis Team
- Coatings Team
- Product Quality team
The polyols team tries synthesizing new raw polyols.
The analysis team takes material from different teams and applies instrumental analysis mainly.
The company cares about the environment and safety and has a separate department for this cause called “Department of Health Safety and Environmental Protection”. They talk a lot about these issues but they do not really practice what they preach. They actually had a day-long conference about safety and we took that day off since we do not understand Chinese! They often spill chemicals on floors, leave chemical bottles open (sometimes toxic chemicals) and drain chemical waste. The smell in some parts of the company is bad. They are still better than other companies in China. But worth to mention, the cleanliness of our labs in AUS is way better than at the company here. Fortunately, they give us the right “protection gear”. So maybe their philosophy of health and safety lies within the protection gear not within the safe practice. So far I broke a 1Liter round-bottomed flask which is around 200$ (around a month worth of salary) but gratefully they said “Don’t worry, most important is your safety”. So I can break stuff without worrying about paying back.
The protection gear set includes a uniform, durable shoes, gloves, eyeglasses, and most interestingly the gas mask which I never saw at AUS.
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| Gas Mask |
2 comments:
hold on!! our labs are cleaner... did you see our messy closets ?? cool mask:p :)
ya they are...maybe except for Dr. Aidan's messy side !! seems u still want to sort out the closets dont u
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