In March of this year, Jilin Chemical Fiber Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jilin Chemical Fiber") was selected by the State owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council as a "world-class specialized, refined, and innovative demonstration enterprise" due to its innovative breakthroughs in the field of carbon fiber.

In recent years, the Jilin chemical fiber and carbon fiber sector has rapidly grown. In the first quarter of this year, the group achieved a total industrial output value of 4.84 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19%, with the carbon fiber sector growing by 1.8 times. At present, Jilin Chemical Fiber is accelerating the promotion of 400000 tons of carbon fiber industry chain projects, striving to form a production capacity of 330000 tons of raw silk, 100000 tons of carbon fiber, and 65000 tons of composite materials by the end of the 14th Five Year Plan period.

Bite the Green Mountain and Attack Carbon Silk

Entering the carbonization line workshop of Jilin Chemical Fiber Subsidiary Kaimeike Company, one can only see a 424-meter production line, where bundles of white raw materials are processed into black carbon fibers through processes such as oxidation, low-temperature carbonization, and high-temperature carbonization. Seven or eight single filaments are combined to achieve the thickness of a single strand of hair, and a bundle of 12000 single filaments of carbon fiber can withstand the weight of two or three adults.

Carbon fiber is known as the "black gold", with greater strength than steel and lighter weight than aluminum. It can be used in new energy equipment, automotive lightweighting, aerospace and other fields, with good performance and high added value.

Jilin Chemical Fiber realizes that ordinary fiber products require a large amount, but have low profits and low returns; The profit margin of high-end fiber materials is high, but the technical threshold is also high. After conducting market research and expert research, Jilin Chemical Fiber focused on the high-end fiber material market and began developing carbon fiber precursor fibers in October 2006.

Jilin Chemical Fiber R&D personnel Chen Haijun told reporters that the technical content of carbon fiber precursor accounts for about 70% of the carbon fiber production technology content, and the quality of precursor largely determines the quality of carbon fiber. Producing high-quality raw silk is the first step to solve the problem.

With over a decade of technical experience and engineering advantages in the wet two-step production of dimethylacetamide (DMAC) acrylic fiber, Jilin Chemical Fiber relied on a carbon fiber innovation team composed of enterprise technical personnel and university experts to independently design experimental equipment. Through more than 70 technological improvements, equipment modifications, and hundreds of repeated experiments, the first batch of carbon fiber precursor fibers was produced in April 2007.

In order to develop qualified products as soon as possible, R&D personnel browse a large amount of literature and spend almost every day in the laboratory and production site. In January 2008, through process optimization and technological transformation of the production line, Jilin Chemical Fiber produced 100 spindles of 500 kilograms of carbon fiber precursor. After carbonization testing, it exceeded the relevant index level and obtained two national invention patents.

After mastering the core technology, Jilin Chemical Fiber Agglomeration Company accelerated the industrialization of carbon fiber production and completed the production of a 5000 ton carbon fiber precursor project in September 2011, achieving large-scale production of carbon fiber precursor. Starting from 2013, Jilin Chemical Fiber has increased its scientific research efforts on the basis of carbon fiber precursor production, and is sprinting towards the direction of "high-precision and cutting-edge" carbon fibers.

"At that time, the market application of carbon fiber was not as widespread as it is today, and companies often suffered losses. Looking back on the difficulties of the past, Chen Haijun vividly remembered.". He said that the group sees the development trend of the industry and adheres to the principle of "supporting and leveraging the scientific research and development of carbon fiber with a output value of tens of billions". All employees carry forward the spirit of "it is better to turn black hair into white hair, but also to turn white silk into black silk", and achieve large-scale production of carbon fiber.

On November 18th last year, the first carbonization line of Jilin Chemical Fiber 12000 ton carbon fiber project was successfully put into operation. This production line has 8 technical patents, achieving more convenient operation control, safer oxidation process, and more environmentally friendly waste discharge system. Nowadays, Jilin Chemical Fiber has invested billions of yuan in technological innovation and overcome a series of technical difficulties.

Forming the entire industrial chain

While fully releasing carbon fiber production capacity, Jilin Chemical Fiber has formed a complete carbon fiber industry chain from raw silk to carbon fiber and then to composite materials, becoming a market-oriented enterprise for large tow raw silk. Its large tow products have achieved universality, high quality, and high efficiency, while small tow products have also achieved specialization and high performance. The quality of carbon fiber products is also constantly improving, and multiple specifications of products have reached the leading level in China. A large bundle of carbon fiber products has been applied to well-known wind turbine blade manufacturing enterprises, effectively driving the improvement of downstream manufacturing efficiency.

Entering the production workshop of Jilin Guoxing Composite Materials Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Jilin Chemical Fiber, I saw neatly stacked black extruded boards coiled into coils. Workshop director Wang Pushun told reporters that these extrusion plates are made of carbon fiber from Jilin Chemical Fiber, mainly used on the main beam of wind turbine blades, leveraging their advantages of high strength and light weight to make the unit more lightweight and efficient.

Jilin Chemical Fiber has formed strategic partnerships with several well-known domestic wind power host manufacturers, becoming a carbon plate procurement supplier, and collaborating with downstream enterprises to develop large-scale low-cost carbon plates for sea and land blades.

In addition to being used for wind turbine blade manufacturing, carbon fiber composite materials are also widely used in various fields such as extruded profiles, building reinforcement, and thermal field materials. Jilin Chemical Fiber actively expands the application scenarios of carbon fiber market, such as using carbon fiber prepreg to produce sports and leisure products such as carbon fiber fishing rods, bicycles, tennis rackets, etc; Carbon fiber woven fabric is widely used in the field of building reinforcement; Carbon fiber winding body can produce natural gas, hydrogen gas storage cylinders, etc.

At the groundbreaking ceremony held this spring, five projects including the automobile leaf spring project, winding gas cylinder project, and carbon fiber additive project were listed as key new construction projects for Jilin Chemical Fiber in 2023. These are key projects for the high-end and integrated development of the carbon fiber industry chain. As of now, the production capacity of Jilin's chemical fiber raw materials has reached 160000 tons, carbonization production capacity has reached 49000 tons, and composite production capacity has reached nearly 20000 tons. The entire carbon fiber industry chain has begun to take shape.

Stubborn struggle for innovation

In the process of moving towards the forefront of technology, the Jilin Chemical Fiber R&D team has worked hard and tirelessly, overcoming various scientific research difficulties and technical challenges.

Guo Jiadong, Senior Supervisor of the Spinning Workshop, encountered a bottleneck in the upgrade of the company's large fiber bundle products and was unable to return home for 20 consecutive days of trial and error on the production line; Lang Jianhui, who is responsible for the intelligent control system of the production line, worked almost every day until early morning due to tight time, short construction period, insufficient personnel, lack of drawings, experience, and demonstration during the installation of the carbonization line. Under her command, there were no mistakes in connecting more than 200 circuits and 500 end lines, and the carbonization demonstration line was successfully driven at once

Jilin Chemical Fiber has always placed talent and innovation work in a prominent position in the development of the enterprise, adhering to the strategy of "strengthening the enterprise with talent and revitalizing it with technology". It has established 8 research institutes based on its main business sectors, and effectively stimulated talent innovation capabilities through mechanism building, platform building, and research topics.

Taking the independent research and development of carbon fiber precursor fibers as an example, Jilin Chemical Fiber leverages its advantages in acrylic fiber production technology and talent, as well as fine management of artificial silk production. In the production of carbon fiber precursor fibers, it deeply carries out the "four improvement projects" of "quality improvement, speed improvement, production improvement, and efficiency improvement", advocating for improving cleanliness around the entire process of clean production, and reducing system impurities by more than 70%; Utilizing the "University Enterprise Customer" industry university research and application technology exchange platform, taking homogenization research and development as the starting point, we will carry out large-scale process optimization and equipment transformation to improve the stability of raw silk product quality; By tapping into the potential of the raw material system, upgrading the power system, precise optimization of key components, and carrying out speed increasing and ingot increasing renovations, the spinning speed of the raw silk has been increased by 17.6%, and the single line production capacity has reached the total design capacity of the original four lines. At present, Jilin Chemical Fiber signs export orders of thousands of tons with foreign enterprises every year.

The constantly improving production technology, expanding application scenarios, and rapidly increasing market orders have made Jilin Chemical Fiber increasingly busy, and the construction of infrastructure such as factories is also accelerating. In recent years, Jilin Chemical Fiber has vigorously promoted the construction of carbon fiber projects. The construction cycle of each production line does not exceed one year, the installation time does not exceed three months, the debugging time is being shortened, and the time to reach production and efficiency is being advanced, constantly refreshing the construction cycle of production lines at the same level.

"During the 14th Five Year Plan period, Jilin Chemical Fiber has planned 24 carbon fiber industry projects. Jilin Chemical Fiber will continuously promote the improvement of carbon fiber quality and cost reduction, continue to expand downstream application fields, achieve integrated development of the entire industry chain, strengthen, optimize and expand the carbon fiber industry, and move towards the forefront of world-class carbon fiber production enterprises." said Song Dewu, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Jilin Chemical Fiber Group Co., Ltd.