Current situation and development prospect of carbon fiber industry in China

Carbon fiber is a carbon content of more than 90% of the fiber material, with "light and high strength" performance, the proportion is only about one-fifth of steel, but the strength can reach 5 to 7 times that of steel, and has high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, good electrical and thermal conductivity and other characteristics, is the development of aerospace, new energy, high-end equipment manufacturing and other high-tech industries important basic materials. It is also a necessary key material in the manufacture of rockets, missiles, fighter jets, naval ships and a variety of cutting-edge military weapons, and has an irreplaceable strategic position in the field of national defense and military industry.

Carbon fiber as a dual-use key new material, over the years, due to the developed countries to implement the dual blockade of technology and products, China has been in a state of control. China began industrial application in the 1970s, but because the manufacturing process was immature and the amount was small, the cost was expensive. At that time, it was mainly used in military and other fields. Nearly 20 years, carbon fiber began to be used in the global manufacturing industry, the future trend is to replace metal materials on a large scale.

Carbon fiber industry development status

Since 2005, through the cooperation of relevant government departments and enterprises, the localization of high-performance carbon fiber has made breakthrough progress, and remarkable achievements have been made in terms of industrial scale, core technology, product quality, application expansion and economic benefits.

In 2020, due to the continuous impact of the new coronavirus epidemic and the impact of the economic downturn, the high-performance fiber industry actively responded, seized the opportunities brought by the abnormal production of relevant foreign enterprises due to the impact of the epidemic and the growth of domestic market demand, strengthened scientific and technological innovation and product quality improvement, and made significant progress in terms of technical level, application scale, and project construction.

The level of technology continues to improve, narrowing the level gap at home and abroad

China's carbon fiber industry has entered a stage of rapid development from laboratory research and development. At present, a relatively stable carbon fiber localization technology system has been formed, the polyacrylonitrile based carbon fiber precursor production process system has been diversified, the core technology of carbon fiber has been continuously broken through, and the independent capability of industrial equipment has been continuously strengthened.

Lanzhou Blue Star Fiber Co., Ltd. "Research on key technologies and equipment for industrialization of 50 K large tow carbon fiber with thousand ton NaSCN method" has filled the market gap of 50 K carbon fiber products in China through the identification of technical achievements; The Ningbo Institute of Materials of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has successfully developed QM65 (M65J grade) high-strength high-modulus carbon fiber, with fiber tensile strength and tensile modulus up to 3 857MPa and 639GPa, respectively. Jiangsu Hengshen Co., Ltd. passed the certification of 24K carbon fiber, carbon fiber fabric and carbon fiber pultrusion plate issued by DNV·GL; The carbon fiber composite material independently developed by Weihai Guangwei Composite Material Co., Ltd. has been applied to AR-500C UAV. These achievements make the overall technical level of China's carbon fiber industry into the international advanced ranks, with about 15 years to shorten the gap with developed countries of more than 30 years.

The scale of products ranks in the forefront of the world, and the trend of domestic substitution for imports is obvious

 Products can cover high-strength, high-strength medium mold, high-mode, high-strength and high-model carbon fiber (the main varieties are equivalent to T300, T700, T800, T1000, M40, M40J, M55J, etc.), carbon fiber production capacity ranks second in the world.

Under the synchronous traction of military and civilian applications, the domestic application of carbon fiber has grown rapidly, and the total domestic application in 2019 has reached 37,840.6 tons, especially the amount of wind power blades has reached 13,800 tons, which has not only become the main driving force for the application of carbon fiber in China, but also met the demand for the use of international wind power blades. The amount of sports and leisure is about 14 000 tons, the amount of construction reinforcement is about 2 000 tons, the amount of pressure vessel is about 1 500 tons, and the amount of civil field is increasing year by year.

In addition, domestic carbon fiber consumption in high-end fields such as aerospace, national defense and military industries has gradually increased. Among them, the domestic aerospace field (including military) consumption is about 1 100 tons, and the use of domestic carbon fiber is about 300 tons, accounting for 27.2%.