Houlang Forest Research Laboratory|ivy
Edit|Luo Zhou.
Coordinator, Editorial Assistant|Xu Jiawei.
Over the past few years, the main domestic carbon fiber companies of Zhongjian Technology, Guangwei Composites and Zhongfu Shenying have been hovering in T700 and T800 for a long time, and have not been able to mass-produce T1100. This is a huge gap between domestic carbon fiber and advanced material companies such as Toray in Japan.
Houlang Forest recently found from "CCTV News" that domestic T1100 carbon fiber has achieved mass production. After the identification of Houlang Forest, the mass production enterprise is Zhongfu Shenying. And confirmed by Zhongfu Shenying that it does have the mass production capacity of T1100, "but the output is small." "But it's a major breakthrough.
T1100 process
From 2006 to 2012, Zhongfu Shenying was mainly engaged in the manufacture of T300 carbon fiber by wet process, and built a 1,000-ton SYT35 (T300 grade) carbon fiber production line.
In 2012, Zhongfu Shenying's first dry-jet wet spinning thousand-ton T700 production line was completed and put into operation, becoming the largest and most technologically advanced high-end carbon fiber production line in China at that time.
In 2015, Zhongfu Shenying built the first 1,000-ton dry-jet wet-spun carbon fiber industrialization production line in China, and in 2017, it built a 1,000-ton T800 carbon fiber production line with completely independent intellectual property rights.
After taking the lead in realizing the large-scale production of T700, T800 and T1000 carbon fibers, Zhongfu Shenying carbon fiber technology is also constantly upgrading and iterating.
In 2021, T1100, which was developed by Zhongfu Shenying Chen Qiufei, Guo Pengzong, Ding Zhengnan and other technical backbones, made a breakthrough in the key technology of polymerization, and the molecular weight of the polymer and the performance of the polymer liquid reached the target, and the key preparation technology of T1100 grade carbon fiber for dry jet and wet spinning was developed.
The R&D project of T1100 is the aerospace high-performance carbon fiber and precursor test line project, and the core technical goal is to have a tensile strength of 7000MPaThe tensile modulus is 324 10GPA and the elongation at break is 2%.
From 2018 to 2021, Zhongfu Shenying invested 32390,000 yuan, and the total investment budget for T1100 carbon fiber industrialization technology and other 2 projects will reach 1 within 5 years after 20210.7 billion yuan. The application scenario is the next generation of aerospace main load-bearing structural parts.
At the end of 2022, Zhongfu Shenying 200 tons of aerospace high-performance carbon fiber (T1100 grade) began linkage testing.
About capacity
May 2023, Xining 2After the 50,000-ton project is fully put into operation, the existing carbon fiber production capacity of Zhongfu Shenying Lianyungang and Xining bases has officially reached 2850,000 tons, becoming the world's third largest carbon fiber producer in terms of production capacity.
Under the advantage of scale, the unit cost of Zhongfu Shenying has been declining, and according to the record of investor relations activities on December 15, 2023, its cost in the third quarter has decreased by more than 30% compared with before full production.
Except Xining 2In addition to the 50,000-ton base, the company's new 30,000-ton high-performance carbon fiber production base in Lianyungang will start construction in April 2023, and the project is planned for about three years, and the company will achieve a production capacity of 5850,000 tons.
Carbon fiber price reduction
Zhongfu Shenying is a leading carbon fiber enterprise in China, listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board in April 2022, and its products are mainly civilian products, mainly including SYT45, SYT45S, SYT49S (benchmarked T700), SYT55S (benchmarked T800 grade carbon fiber), SYT65 (benchmarked T1000) and SYM40, and its application fields include sports and leisure, carbon-carbon composites, wind turbine blades, and aerospace.
Through years of technical research, Zhongfu Shenying has ensured the industrialization capabilities of T700, T800, T1000 and M40, and occupies an absolute leading position in the field of domestic high-performance carbon fiber with more than 50% share of T700 and above product series in the domestic market.
In the past three years, the compound growth rate of revenue and net profit of Zhongfu Shenying was respectively. 5%。In the past two years, the carbon fiber production capacity of Zhongfu Shenying has expanded from 3,500 tons to 2850,000 tons, an expansion of 814 times.
With the centralized release of domestic carbon fiber production capacity from September 2022, the adjustment of the supply and demand pattern has made the domestic carbon fiber product market continue. According to Baichuan Yingfu statistics, since the beginning of 2023, about 40% of domestic carbon fiber has been produced.
In the first three quarters of 2023, Zhongfu Shenying's revenue will be 160.9 billion yuan, an increase of 1077%；Net profit attributable to the parent company 29.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3079%。The company's market capitalization decreased from the highest point of 46.2 billion yuan on November 3, 2022 to 26.8 billion yuan on December 19, 2023, **4199%。
In the face of the continuous decline of product quality, technological progress and continuous cost reduction may become the key to the breakthrough of Zhongfu Shenying.
Global comparisons
The value of T1100 in the field of carbon fiber is similar to ChatGPT40 in the industry level of AI large models: the top-level products of the technology chain that have entered the commercialization stage.
TORAYCA T1100 is the world premiere of the industry giant Toray in 2014, and the product performance was revised to achieve a tensile strength of 7000MPa and a tensile modulus of 324GPA.
In carbon fiber products, strength corresponds to firmness;The modulus corresponds to the sensitivity, and the larger the modulus, the more effective it is to transmit vibration. But there is a contradiction between strength and modulus, and if you increase the tensile strength, the modulus of elasticity will decrease, and vice versa.
After Toray, the only company that has reached the mass production of T1100 level products is Mitsubishi Rayon (71GPA, 320GPA) and Hextow IM10 from Hearst in the United States. However, the tensile strength of IM10 is 6895MPa, and the elastic modulus of 314GPA is not as good as Toray's T1100.
According to Toray, the tensile strength and elastic modulus of T1100 are more than 10% higher than that of T800, respectively, to meet the requirements of a new generation of aircraft, so it has become a key component of several U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)** systems, and is also used in the structural application of future vertical lift (FVL) platforms. Overair Inc., an American aircraft start-upThe company announced a strategic partnership with Toray U.S. to use the T1100 for its low-noise, zero-emission electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) Butterfly prototype project.
In October 2022, Toray USA announced a major upgrade to its carbon fiber plant in Decatur, Alabama, with a total investment of $15 million and doubling T1100 production capacity to 400 tons. The upgrade is scheduled to start in April and end in September 2023.
Domestically, Zhongjian Technology said in an interactive Q&A on September 15 that when it came to the progress of the project of "R&D of domestic T1100 carbon fiber material preparation technology", the company said that ZT9H products had passed the relevant review.
Developed in 2015, the ZT9 series is equivalent to T1000 carbon fiber and has a tensile modulus of T1100 carbon fiber.
On November 24, 2023, the interactive Q&A said that the current mass production of ZT9H carbon fiber is mainly 6K specifications, tailored according to the new application needs of users, and lacks comparability with the industry's general-purpose carbon fiber, and the procurement customer of the new variety ZT9H is customer A.
Guangwei Composites said on the interactive platform on June 26, 2023 that its two high-end carbon fiber products, T1100 and M65J, currently have stable engineering production capacity, of which T1100 has formed verification income.
In 2021, Zhongfu Shenying successfully conquered the key technology for the preparation of T1100 grade carbon fiber ultra-high molecular weight polymer liquid, and at the end of 2022, the company's 200 tons of aerospace high-performance carbon fiber (T1100 grade) began linkage test run. It is rumored that Zhongfu Shenying expects the T1100 product grade to be named SYT70.
Of course, the R&D steps of companies in the industry will not stop at T1100, in addition to T1200 and other series of follow-up products, Toray has developed T2000 carbon fiber, with a high tensile strength of 18 GPA, but it has not yet been officially commercialized.
The highest-performance carbon fiber product being developed by Hatch in the United States is Hextow HM63, which is an ultra-high modulus carbon fiber with a tensile strength of 4900MPa and an elastic modulus of 640GPA, which is expected to be launched in 2024.