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On July 6th, the morning light of the Songnen Plain bathed the towers of Daqing Petrochemical, China National Petroleum Corporation, draping the equipment in a golden veil. Jiang Dawei, a soon-to-retire recipient of the National May 1st Labor Medal and chief technician of the Ethylene Cracking Unit, pressed the shutter in front of the central control room of the chemical industrial zone. Inside the control room, data flickered and shifted; in the equipment area, vibrant young faces thronged; and the familiar, steady sounds of the equipment filled the air. Everything was so close, yet felt like a distant memory.
If we didn't turn back the clock forty years, it would be hard to imagine what this "steel forest" of crisscrossing pipe corridors looked like back then.
Ethylene, known as the "Mother of Petrochemical Industry," is a benchmark for measuring a nation's chemical strength. In September 1977, the nation decided to import four 300,000-ton/year ethylene plants, one of which was located in Daqing.
On June 28, 1986, a deafening roar shattered the silence of the wasteland. Daqing Petrochemical's 300,000-ton/year ethylene plant successfully started operation! Among the four plants imported nationwide at the same time, it achieved four "firsts": the first to be completed and put into operation, the first to pass national acceptance, the first project to win all gold medals, and the first to achieve full compliance.
"That sound was more beautiful than any musical instrument!" Xiao Xingyu, who participated in the construction project, recalled that 50,000 builders, under the blue sky and on frozen ground, relied on manual labor without modern machinery; lacking experience, they studied the blueprints on-site bit by bit. The moment the plant went into operation, the calluses on their hands seemed to soften, and the sweat on their foreheads tasted sweet.
"Cherish the glorious history of Daqing, create a new brilliance for Daqing." These gleaming characters, engraved on the wall of the old control room, are also deeply etched in the hearts of every employee.
Spanning forty years, this baton of spirit has driven one astonishing leap after another. In 1999, the 480,000-ton/year ethylene technical upgrade was completed, filling the gap in large-scale domestically produced compressor units; in 2004, the 600,000-ton/year ethylene expansion project was completed and put into operation, taking production capacity to a new level; in 2012, the 1.2 million-ton/year ethylene expansion project was fully handed over, and this plant, the first to adopt my country's independently developed process package technology, broke the monopoly of foreign technology that had lasted for more than half a century.
The four words "Striving for national glory" are engraved in the blood of Daqing Petrochemical workers. Starting with 300,000 tons, to today's annual production capacity of over 1.3 million tons, they have completed a "three-stage leap" in the history of ethylene production. To date, Daqing Petrochemical has produced over 26 million tons of ethylene, breaking the million-ton mark for annual production for 10 consecutive years, becoming an unshakable "ballast" for energy supply in Northeast China.
With unwavering dedication, we nurture our equipment like children, allowing old trees to sprout new buds.
"I only want to do one thing well in my life: operate the equipment smoothly and efficiently." These simple yet heartwarming words from Zuo Chengyu, a recipient of the China Skills Award, reflect a commitment to excellence. At Daqing Petrochemical, "nurturing the equipment like children" is not just a slogan, but a deeply ingrained, daily practice of meticulous care.
"The equipment is the most honest; if you mistreat it, it will show you its true colors." This saying, once a favorite of Jiao Tongxiang, the former director of the cracking workshop, remains a motto for young employees. To ensure these "old partners" are well-fed and maintained, Daqing Petrochemical continuously optimizes its "recipe," adjusting the raw material structure, reducing the proportion of heavy feedstock, and implementing a zero-tail-oil operation mode for the E1 unit, making ethylene feedstock increasingly "lighter" and continuously decreasing the processing share of heavy cracking feedstock.
In 2025, the E2 unit underwent partial maintenance. As is customary, a shutdown inevitably disrupts the material balance of the entire industrial chain. The technical team took a different approach, utilizing the process interrelationship between the E1 and E2 units and cleverly implementing dynamic switching on the emission-free start-up line. This enabled the pyrolysis gas compressor to undergo maintenance without shutdown, effectively saving nine hours of valuable production time.
With this almost obsessive dedication, Daqing Petrochemical has pushed the concept of "molecular refining" to its limits. By tapping into the maximum potential of the catalytic dry gas C2 recovery unit in the refining area, they have converted hydrocarbon molecules, which would otherwise be burned as low-value fuel, into high-value-added ethylene gas, truly achieving "complete utilization." In the first five months of this year, the combined energy consumption of E1 and E2 ethylene plants and the processing loss rate of E3 reached record lows. Behind these impressive figures lies the unwavering pursuit of "safe, stable, long-term, full-capacity, and high-quality" operations by countless ethylene workers.
Digital Intelligence Empowers, Cloud-Based "Smart Brain" Reshapes the Refining Ecosystem
Now, walking into the plant area, it's rare to see employees rushing around. Orderliness has become the norm, a source of confidence for the staff. As a benchmark for advanced digital workshops in Heilongjiang Province this year, the ethylene plant's powerful "smart core" is silently reshaping everything.
Daqing Petrochemical has forged process simulation software into a "super brain" for optimizing production. Technicians no longer rely on experience to "cross the river by feeling the stones," but instead use simulations of product yields under different raw material combinations to precisely guide production adjustments, revitalizing older units and steadily increasing the yields of new units. Addressing the industry-wide problem of declining vacuum in the pyrolysis gas compressor rehydrator, the QC team in the ethylene unit's cracking section overcame the bottleneck of high-load operation by utilizing digital monitoring methods to solve the online cleaning technology for the rehydrator.
In recent years, Daqing Petrochemical has completed the upgrade and transformation of the DCS system in the E3 unit, further improving signal processing speed. Operators, seated in the central control room, can respond to valve openings thousands of meters away with millisecond-level precision. Simultaneously, intelligent inspection robots have quietly taken up their posts, replacing manual labor in the "forbidden zones" of high temperature and high pressure. Utilizing infrared thermal imaging technology, they keenly detect subtle signs of equipment overheating, nipping malfunctions in the bud.
The benefits of digitalization extend far beyond efficiency gains; they also extend the depth of the industrial chain. With the successful commissioning of PetroChina's first 50,000-ton/year 1-hexene/1-octene co-production unit in mid-June, Daqing Petrochemical is rapidly advancing along the path of "refining to chemicals, chemicals to materials, and materials to mid-to-high-end products." In the first five months of this year, the company's new material output increased by nearly 60% year-on-year, with high-value-added acrylic fiber products, among others, confidently entering a broader market.
From the spark of hope ignited on the barren land in 1986 to the torrent of data flowing through the cloud today; from the initial "ethylene dream" to today's "intelligent ethylene," Daqing Petrochemical has built a new integrated refining and chemical industry, continuing its legendary journey of "oil refining and chemical processing" amidst the surging tide of digital transformation.
Standing at the starting point of the "15th Five-Year Plan," the flames of the cracking furnace still burn brightly. The new generation of ethylene workers has taken over not just the walkie-talkies from their predecessors, but also the responsibility etched into their very bones. At the end of the interview, Xing Tongda, the shift leader of the Ethylene Department II, lightly stroked the edge of the central control console, his voice resolute: "The furnace fire hasn't changed, and neither has the spirit. The spark that ethylene workers ignited on the barren land has become a light covering the mountains and fields. We will cultivate this fertile field of 'ethylene' hope and reap a new harvest."
