Fluorine Notes, 1998, 1, 9-10

Aleksey N. llyin, Chief of a Central laboratory of JSC "Halogen"

Question: Dear Mr. llyin, thank you for your consent to give an interview in the first issue of our new journal "Fluorine notes". The first question is regards prospects for development of domestic fluorine chemistry. For example, representatives of our academic science in the majority have not very optimistic feelings and it seems to them that we can not survive without foreign investments.

Answer: It is possible to live without foreign investments. For this we need a different system of taxation which is capable to promote production , for example at investments in new technologies. In this case we can do welt without any help. But right now we have no privileges. That is, finally the all depends on tie Government policy.

Question: Which directions of fluorine chemistry development will be continued in Russia?

Answer: I think there are two traditional directions for the near-term outlook. First, substitution of ozone depleting substances with ozone safety ones. JSC "Halogen" deals with it very actively. For example, we have developed the production of R-125 (pentafluoroethane) which is an ozone safety substance. Moreover, as for as a number of ozone depleting refrigerants can not be used in their individual form as a working body in refrigerators and conditioners due to some their properties, we are developing blend refrigerants which will be competitive with refrigerants 22,12 or 502. The list of all these compounds is already known and we have only to deal with this. Second, Fluoroplasts. I believe in the near future there will be no important revolutions on producing any unique co-polymers of tetrafluoroethylene with anything. At present we have succeeded in increasing Fluoroplast production up to the level of the former Soviet Union when we had the highest volume of the Fluoroplasts production.

More over, obviously we need to drive for creation of new products on the fluorine base, especially hi-tech ones and very valuable accordingly. It is so called low-tonnage production.

Question: Do you prefer to manage in this direction without any help or to cooperate with other enterprises? Have you some links remained from the Soviet period?

Answer: On low-tonnage production we have a cooperation with academic Institutes (Moscow - INEOS, Novosibirsk) and with RSC "Applied Chemistry". We are looking for alternatives of cooperation . But we work in this direction by ourselves also. In the field of small chemistry it is known what can and must be done, what is in demand; approaches and synthesis methods are known, we need only to work in this direction to make a detailed design. A lot of things can be done at a laboratory, but at transition to an industrial scale different questions arise.

Question: Who is a main consumer of your production?

Answer: Domestic consumption is small and we should direct our attention towards the world market. We had taken all due measures which allowed to stabilize the production and regular staff on a certain level. All this allowed to achieve a necessary balance of income and expenditure. We have enough money as to pay wages and to develop the production. If the matter with investments could be solved( that is the investments to new technologies would not be assessed), it would be more easy to settle a problem of the new productions. At present all the profit is overtaxed without any differentiation of the profit direction:

either to wages or to new technology development. But I have to point out that the State supported us financially within the frames of ozone depleting substances phaseout at the development of R-125 production.

Thank you very much for your interview.

Fluorine Notes, 1998, 1, 9-10