Zhang Guoliang: Let Made In China Carbon Fiber Stand On The World Stage

As a strategic material, carbon fiber is known as the "national heavyweight", and its important value is known all over the world. China's carbon fiber research started not late, but due to the blockade of the West and the weakness of its own industrial base, no substantial progress has been made for a long time. In the past ten years, with the hard work of a number of excellent scientific research institutes and enterprises, China's carbon fiber industry has made remarkable achievements, of which Zhongfu Shenying Carbon Fiber Co., Ltd. is a typical representative.

On September 29 this year, Zhongfu Shenying Carbon Fiber Co., Ltd. ushered in the 15th anniversary of carbon fiber engineering construction. In the past 15 years, under the policy support of the state to vigorously develop strategic emerging industries and the strategic guidance of China Building Materials Group, Zhongfu Shenying has been focusing on the industrialization of carbon fiber and constantly pushing the industrialization process of domestic carbon fiber to a new height with the development ambition of "winning honor for the motherland and striving for national glory". Among them, Zhang Guoliang, chairman of Zhongfu Shenying, has made great contributions.

Zhongfu Shenying, with the development ambition of "winning honor for the motherland and striving for the nation", focuses on the industrialization of carbon fiber and continuously pushes the industrialization process of domestic carbon fiber to a new height.

With the continuous improvement of production technology, the market demand for domestic carbon fiber is in short supply, and the industry has entered a period of rapid development in recent years. For such a special industry, what problems may be encountered in the future? How to develop? From the exclusive interview with Zhang Guoliang, we can see that he has new views on the development of carbon fiber industry, and these suggestions have important guiding significance for the development of the industry.

01. From "layman" to the highest national science and Technology Award

In March 2005, Zhang Guoliang, a deputy to the National People's Congress, came to Beijing to attend the two sessions of the people's Republic of China. During the meeting, he learned about the current situation of carbon fiber development in China from several material experts. At that time, he knew nothing about carbon fiber. At that time, he learned that carbon fiber is a key strategic material urgently needed by national security and weapons equipment. A few countries that have mastered this technology have long implemented technology blockade and monopoly, resulting in the shortage of carbon fiber in China's market It has seriously affected the country's economic construction and national defense development.

After the two sessions, Zhang Guoliang initiated the idea of taking part in the road of carbon fiber industrialization. He wanted to change the situation that our country was controlled by others in this field. In September 2005, Zhang Guoliang entrusted his profitable yingyou textile machinery group to a professional manager. With more than 70 million yuan in cash, Zhang Guoliang, as a "layman", devoted himself to the carbon fiber business, and started industrialization on a piece of reed covered saline alkali beach outside Lianyungang. With no domestic experience to learn from and foreign technology blocked, Zhang Guoliang and his team set up a production line with an annual output of 500 tons of carbon fiber precursor and began trial production. During this period, countless size problems were solved, and qualified raw silk was finally produced.

With the continuous expansion of production line scale and continuous improvement of technology maturity, in 2007, Zhongfu Shenying successfully produced the first batch of carbon fiber; in 2010, the large-scale production of 1000 tons of T300 carbon fiber broke the long-term monopoly of developed countries on domestic carbon fiber market, and won the first prize of science and technology of China Textile Industry Federation.

With the progress of carbon fiber technology, Zhang Guoliang keenly realized that the development of dry jet wet spinning technology is the mainstream of carbon fiber in the future. He decisively sounded the clarion call for the carbon fiber above T700 and T800.

In order to break through this bottleneck as soon as possible, Zhang Guoliang once again personally led the expedition. "If China's new materials want to make a turnaround and make a key breakthrough on the road of carbon fiber industrialization, there is no other way to go except independent innovation." "our innovation is to dare to integrate innovation, dare to innovate out of books, and dare to innovate from practice." Zhang Guoliang believes that on the road of science, sometimes it is necessary to break through the conventional thinking, break through the habitual thinking, and find a new way, maybe we can find a bright future.

After more than three years of hard exploration and experiment, Zhongfu Shenying has independently developed PAN fiber rapid homogenization pre oxidation and carbonization integration technology based on independent innovation. It has built a dry jet wet spinning thousand ton high strength / 100 ton medium modulus carbon fiber industrial production system with independent intellectual property rights for the first time. It has become China's first and the world's third enterprise to overcome the dry jet wet spinning process problems It fills the blank of high performance carbon fiber production technology represented by dry jet wet spinning process in China, and breaks the long-term monopoly of foreign giants in the Chinese market. In 2016, "key technology and independent equipment for industrialization of high performance carbon fiber by dry jet wet spinning" was awarded the first prize of science and technology award of China Textile Industry Federation. In January 2018, the project of "key technologies and applications of dry jet wet spinning 1000 ton high strength / 100 ton medium modulus carbon fiber industrialization" won the first prize of 2017 National Science and technology progress award, which is also the highest award of China's carbon fiber industry.

After that, Zhang Guoliang did not relax the pace of technical research. On this basis, he led the enterprise to systematically optimize and improve the preparation process of T800 carbon fiber. After two years, he took the lead in realizing the engineering of T1000 ultra-high strength carbon fiber by dry jet wet spinning in China, which improved the overall technical level of China's carbon fiber industry. In October 2019, "T1000 ultra high strength carbon fiber 100 ton engineering key technology" project successfully passed the national level appraisal, the technology has reached the international advanced level, is an important progress of domestic carbon fiber industry, has important significance for promoting the development of the entire carbon fiber industry.

In 2019, Zhang Guoliang also made an important strategic layout in the carbon fiber industry. The "annual output of 20000 tons of high-performance carbon fiber and supporting raw silk project" was officially started in Xining. In December this year, the project will be put into production one after another. By then, Zhongfu Shenying's carbon fiber supply capacity will be greatly improved, which can better alleviate the current situation of insufficient market supply, and Xining will become a state-owned country International competitiveness of the world's first-class carbon fiber production base.

02. Push the third generation carbon fiber to meet the market demand

The 15 years' development of Zhongfu Shenying carbon fiber industry is just the 15 years when the domestic carbon fiber industry has broken through the "from nothing" stage. The industrialization has been blooming and fruiting. It has been making great progress and breaking the competition pattern of the world carbon fiber market step by step. It has injected firm confidence into the development of China's carbon fiber industry, improved the overall technical level of China's carbon fiber industry, and promoted the whole industry The development of carbon fiber industry is of great significance.

For the current achievements of Zhongfu Shenying and domestic carbon fiber, Zhang Guoliang believes that although some achievements have been made, technically speaking, China's carbon fiber industry, including Zhongfu Shenying, is still on the starting line and is in the primary stage of development. "But our carbon fiber products are no worse than foreign ones. Last year, the world's carbon fiber output was 100000 tons, 50000 tons in Japan, 20000 tons in the United States, and 6000 tons in China, including 3500 tons in Zhongfu Shenying. China's key military industries basically use domestic carbon fiber. " Zhang Guoliang.

As a national strategic material, the application of carbon fiber is very wide, many industries have also introduced carbon fiber, the future development prospects are very broad. It is understood that China's military and civil carbon fiber demand is 30000 tons, while domestic carbon fiber is only 6000 tons, far from meeting the market demand.

Zhang Guoliang also saw the problem faced by the industry. He thought that the industry needs to do two things in the future. First, with the development of technology, the industry should rapidly expand its production capacity to meet the needs of domestic and foreign markets; The second is to strengthen the research on carbon fiber with higher quality. "Theoretically speaking, at present, China's carbon fiber materials only play 4% of the theoretical level in terms of function and performance, and there is still a lot of research space in the future." Zhang Guoliang said.

For this reason, Zhang Guoliang has also set goals for Zhongfu Shenying: first, to establish a special production line to provide special carbon fiber for the application of national high-grade scientific and technological products. For example, our country's large aircraft have put forward an urgent demand for the application of domestic carbon fiber and composite materials. We are striving to make domestic large aircraft use domestic composite materials in the shortest time. Second, efforts should be made in the large-scale production of carbon fiber. The highest level of carbon fiber production technology is to have high stability. To achieve large-scale production, low-cost production and meet the market demand at home and abroad, this is also the primary goal of Zhongfu Shenying Xining 20000 tons carbon fiber project. After that, intelligent production and environmental protection production should be realized and the third generation carbon fiber production technology should be launched. Third, under the current international situation, western countries are increasingly tightening the technical blockade of China's high-tech products. We can only rely on our own efforts to ensure the sound development of domestic carbon fiber. In recent years, Zhongfu Shenying adheres to the localization of equipment production line, making the equipment localization reach more than 80%. Next, it will further promote the new breakthrough of equipment localization in Xining 20000 ton project.

03. Develop high performance and low cost carbon fiber to participate in international competition

In recent years, with the continuous progress of domestic carbon fiber technology, its application in various fields is more and more widely, the industry has entered a period of rapid development, enterprises set off a new upsurge of investment, and new enterprises have entered the industry. Zhang Guoliang believes that some domestic carbon fiber manufacturers have done very well. It doesn't matter whether they increase investment or enter the industry. However, it should be noted that they must aim at new products with higher performance and lower cost, scientifically and rationally analyze the development situation of the industry and understand the products required by the market. China's carbon fiber market capacity is large, and the range of required varieties is also very wide. In the future, with the technical progress of domestic carbon fiber, the cost will be further reduced, and the application range will be more and more extensive.

For the future development of enterprises, Zhang Guoliang also stressed the importance of talent training and talent echelon construction, which is very important for any enterprise. In his opinion, it is a very difficult process to cultivate talents, just as it is to engage in scientific research. We must let them stand in the experimental site, to experience some things. "Up to now, I still have 70% or 80% of my time on the production line. Only in the process of practice can I get exercise, and then I have to cultivate the ability of comprehensive analysis and logical reasoning." Zhang Guoliang said.

As a representative of the leading carbon fiber entrepreneurs, Zhang Guoliang put forward some suggestions for the future development of carbon fiber industry: keep up with the international technological innovation frontier, shorten the gap with the international advanced technology, and gradually realize the parallel operation; increase the strength of new application and development of downstream composite materials to support the development system of carbon fiber industrialization; We should improve the industry concentration, expand the scale of industrialization, completely reverse the current situation of foreign monopoly, and participate in international competition.

"I believe that in the near future, domestic carbon fiber will definitely win its foothold on the world stage." Zhang Guoliang said confidently.