China Has Made New Breakthroughs In Carbon Fiber Research And Development. Look At This Mysterious Figure, Zhang Guoliang.

Chairman of Zhongfu Eagle Carbon Fiber Co., Ltd.

Zhang Guoliang

In January this year, 2017 National Science and Technology Awards Conference, a project from Lianyungang particularly absorbed. The "dry jet wet spinning 1000 tons of high-strength / 100 tons of medium modulus carbon fiber industrialization key technology and application" project has won the first prize of national science and technology progress. Zhang Guoliang, chairman of the project and chairman of Zhongfu Eagle carbon fiber company, poured all his energy into leading the team to overcome all kinds of technical difficulties. At last, he realized the industrialization of carbon fiber, broke the international blockade, and made outstanding contributions to China's economic development and national security, which is called the pioneer of China's carbon fiber industry reform.

"My dream is to make Chinese own carbon fiber".

Zhang Guoliang always adheres to the belief of "winning honour for the motherland and competing for the nation", which has made the dream of Chinese made by carbon fiber more than 40 years ago, and has built the largest 10000 ton carbon fiber production enterprise in China. It has successfully realized the localization and industrialization of carbon fiber, and has completely broken the country's carbon fiber. market The long term monopoly has reversed the situation that China's carbon fiber is totally dependent on imports and made outstanding contributions.

General secretary Xi Jinping and then general secretary of the CPC Central Committee Hu Jintao once held Zhang Guoliang's hand to ask about the progress of carbon fiber, and encouraged him to "make sure China's carbon fiber is ready". In August 2010, Li Keqiang, vice premier of the State Council, went to Lianyungang to inspect Zhongfu divine eagle Carbon Fiber Co., Ltd. Accompanied by Zhang Guoliang, Li Keqiang continued to praise "not simple, not simple!" at the end of the inspection, Li Keqiang, who knew the importance of carbon fiber deeply, told Zhang Guoliang: "we must shoulder the responsibility of the state."

The vision of carbon fiber entering Zhang Guoliang was March 2005, and Zhang Guoliang, as the deputy to the National People's Congress, went to Beijing to attend the national two sessions. During the meeting, he learned about the development of carbon fiber in China from several materials experts. Carbon fiber is the key strategic material needed for national security and weaponry. A small number of countries that master this technology have long been technically blockaded and monopolized, resulting in the shortage of carbon fiber in China's market and seriously affecting the country's economic construction and national defense development.

Since the two sessions, Zhang Guoliang has sprouted the idea of joining the industrialization of carbon fiber, changing the situation of our country being controlled by people in this field. Zhang Guoliang told his visiting experts, "I will complete the industrialization of carbon fiber."

"Carbon fiber is called" the king of new materials "by our materials, and it is commonly known as" black gold ", which shows its importance. Although carbon fiber research in China has been carried out for more than 30 years, it is basically confined to the experimental exploration stage and has never been able to achieve industrialization. "You are not the first entrepreneur to make carbon fiber in China, but up to now there is no successful case. The technical difficulty of carbon fiber is too great. Some enterprises have hit hundreds of millions of dollars, but even the shadow of carbon fiber has not been seen. "Don't underestimate carbon fiber. With such a thin thread, the state has invested so much money and time that it has not been industrialized. You should not overestimate yourself in a private enterprise. In dozens of trips to the north, Zhang Guoliang hears all the experts' questions.

"As an entrepreneur, we must have the sense of responsibility to risk our country's worries. Even if we lose our fortune, we must create Chinese own carbon fiber!" even if no one understood Zhang Guoliang at that time, he was still so determined.

But many difficulties lie before Zhang Guoliang: there is no equipment reference or relevant information, and at the same time, they are faced with technical blockade abroad, and hardly know about the carbon fiber industry. He almost searched all the information about carbon fiber, recorded more than 3000 main process data, and read more than ten hours a day. The professional books compiled by Professor Fu Fu of the Shanxi Coal Chemical Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences became the guiding light of the initial research. He has almost searched all the people who have studied, tested and touched carbon fiber in China, seriously investigated and asked for advice.

In September 2005, Zhang Guoliang gave his professional textile manager to his professional manager. With about 70000000 yuan of cash, he took the lead in the carbon fiber business as an outsider, and began industrialization research in a salty beach with reeds on the outskirts of Lianyungang. In September 29th, the carbon fiber project was officially established, and Zhang Guoliang called it the "929 project". The construction and installation and commissioning of the carbon fiber tackling plant are running at an extraordinary speed and time. Zhang Guoliang explored the technical problems with the first-line technicians and operators in the daytime. He spent the night lying in bed to comb the train of thought. He woke up at three or four in the morning and did not have the heart to call the technicians in the workshop. He wakes his wife up and tells her her train of thought and ideas. This is repeated every day.

Without domestic experience and foreign technology being blocked, Zhang Guoliang and his team built up 500 tons of carbon fiber precursor production line with their own grope, and began trial production. This is a polymer chemical reaction process, raw materials are flammable and explosive substances, if there is a slight operation or improper control in the reaction process, there will be serious explosion accidents. This hopeful and dangerous start button was pressed by Zhang Guoliang personally, without the worst of the imagination, but the trial production process was not successful, and the problems emerged one after another. Zhang Guoliang worked with technicians and workers for 74 days at the side of the production line and solved countless problems. Finally, the qualified raw silk was produced.

With the continuous expansion of the scale of the production line and the continuous improvement of technology maturity, in 2007, Zhongfu Eagle successfully produced the first batch of carbon fibers. In 2010, the production of 1000 tons of T300 grade carbon fiber broke the domestic carbon fiber of developed countries. market Long term monopoly.

Never stop to break through the core technical problems of dry spray wet spinning carbon fiber

Zhang Guoliang is not only the decision-maker and head of enterprise development, but also the backbone and leader of enterprise technological innovation. As the leader of enterprise technology innovation, he led his team to the technological progress and product innovation of carbon fiber, and tackled one after another world technical problem. Finally, he stood on the podium of the first prize of national science and Technology Progress Award in 2017. "The key to our success is innovation. On the road to innovation, we will never stop! "Zhang Guoliang said firmly.

China has made important progress in the wet carbon fiber technology, and the international carbon fiber power has not stopped to relax. They are developing the dry spray wet spinning technology in the same period. Compared with wet carbon fiber, dry jet wet spinning process has greatly improved mechanical properties, improved production efficiency and substantially lower energy consumption, and has become a new technology for high performance carbon fibers. Dry spun spinning is also recognized as a spinning technology that is difficult to break through in the carbon fiber industry. Only Toray and Hexcel of the United States have been mastered by two enterprises, and their preparation technology and equipment have been monopolized and blocked.

Zhang Guoliang is keen to realize that the development of dry and wet spinning technology is the mainstream of carbon fiber in the future. He decisively blew the horn of the carbon fiber advancing above T700. He knows that general purpose T300 carbon fiber is difficult to adapt to the demand of high performance carbon fiber in aviation and emerging industries. The T700 grade carbon fiber produced by dry jet wet spinning process is urgently needed for modern national defense, and is the most important new material in the manufacture of sophisticated defense equipment. This new material plays a vital role in resisting deformation, temperature difference and weight reduction. The sea, weapons and equipment are waiting for high-performance carbon fiber.

In order to break through this bottleneck as soon as possible, Zhang Guoliang took the lead again. He has been learning, absorbing and innovating in the process of carbon fiber exploration. He has turned himself into a truly expert in this field and has a deeper understanding of carbon fiber. "China's new materials need to fight for a turnaround to achieve a key breakthrough in the industrialization of carbon fiber. In addition to independent innovation, there is no other way to go. Our innovation is to dare to integrate innovation, dare to jump out of books to innovate, and dare to innovate from practice."

Dry jet wet spinning is highly dependent on the high molecular weight, narrow distribution and high homogenization requirements of the raw material. Meanwhile, there are some key technical problems such as high viscosity fluid spinning, dry spray wet spinning, coagulation and aggregation control, dense structure, high stretch, homogeneous pre oxidation and so on. It is urgent to break through the bottleneck and build the main dry spray wet spinning carbon fiber technology and equipment system.

Zhang Guoliang led the team in tackling difficulties and advancing bravely. He believes that on the way of science, it is sometimes necessary to break away from convention and break through habitual thinking and find another way to find bright prospects. Tackling key problems, tackling key problems, tackling key problems again, independent design, independent manufacturing, self installation and self commissioning, Zhang Guoliang has been working with engineers for almost every day to discuss products and technology. All engineering design, mechanical design, installation of each equipment, and formulation of every process, Zhang Guoliang is a direct decision-maker and participant.

After more than 3 years of hard trials and experiments, the Zhongfu Eagle has broken through the core technical problems of dry spray wet spinning carbon fiber and achieved a series of important scientific and technological achievements. They innovated the technology of large volume polymerization and homogenization of raw fluid, and conquered the key technologies of high strength / medium modulus carbon fiber precursor dry jet wet spinning. We developed the technology of PAN fiber rapid homogenization, pre oxidation and carbonization. The first time we built an industrial production system of dry jet wet spinning 1000 tons of high modulus / 100 ton medium modulus carbon fiber with independent intellectual property rights. Through the integrated innovation of technology and equipment, the high performance carbon fiber has been produced efficiently, and the products have reached the advanced level of the international similar products. It has become the first and the third enterprise in the world to overcome the difficult problem of dry jet wet spinning process. It fills the gap of high performance carbon fiber production technology with dry spray wet spinning technology as the substitute in China, and breaks the monopoly of foreign giants in the Chinese market.

The research and development of dry jet wet spinning T1000 grade carbon fiber started in 2015, and achieved pilot technology in 2016. On this basis, the engineering technology was tackled, and a major breakthrough in the scale production from trial to 100 ton scale was achieved, with complete independent intellectual property rights in key technology and core equipment, and the product will solve the urgent need for high-end materials in the country. In 2018, the breakthrough of T1000 carbon fiber engineering was achieved. The 100 tons T1000 carbon fiber production line was put into operation and operated smoothly. This marks a new step for China's high performance carbon fiber and has entered a new era of higher quality development.

At present, Zhongfu Condor has systematically mastered T700, T800 thousand ton technology and T1000, M30 and M35 class 100 ton technology, and occupies more than 60% in the domestic carbon fiber market, which has greatly promoted the development of China's carbon fiber composite materials industry. Zhang Guoliang said that in the future, localization should be integrated throughout the production line, and truly master the core technology of carbon fiber production, and better serve the end users of carbon fiber and composite materials. The use of domestic carbon fiber is the contribution to the development of China's carbon fiber industry.

It is always on the road to take the mission and innovate.

China's domestic carbon fiber has gone through 12 years of hardship, and Zhang Guoliang has stepped in from the prime of life. He said that general secretary Xi Jinping put forward the idea of "stimulating and protecting entrepreneurship" in the nineteen major reports of the party, and he was deeply encouraged by it as an entrepreneur. He said that the most important thing is to have a sense of mission, and ultimately to connect the fate of the enterprise with the destiny of the country. This time we can win the first prize of the national science and technology progress award, proving that China's carbon fiber industry has really entered a new historical development stage, but there will be more difficult problems to solve.

Looking forward to the future of the carbon fiber industry, Zhang Guoliang admitted that there is still room for the study of carbon fiber. "The current technology can only play a very small part in the theoretical performance of carbon fiber, and it will make better carbon fiber products in the future, with great potential."

At the same time, he also said that China's carbon fiber production is still not high enough, the supply can only meet 1/5 of the demand. In the future, we must first lose no time to expand production and meet the demand, especially to meet the major needs of the state. We must keep up with the premise of guaranteeing quality.

In May 2017, the domestic large aircraft C919 successfully took off at the fourth runway of the Pudong airport, marking that China became the world's few countries that could manufacture large aircraft. It is reported that 12% of the composites used by C919 are mainly carbon fiber composites. "At present, our carbon fiber products are mainly used in aerospace, weapons and equipment, carbon core cables, building reinforcement, pressure vessels, sports goods, wind power blades, automobile manufacturing and other fields." Zhang Guoliang said that with the successful development of a large number of China's large aircraft and other heavy weapons, the use of carbon fiber will definitely increase in the next few decades.

Zhang Guoliang told reporters that different varieties and properties of carbon fiber are widely used in many fields. Civil aviation is the highest realm of carbon fiber application. Carbon fiber is the Pearl on the crown of material field. It is necessary to apply carbon fiber to civil aviation and truly popularize carbon fiber to civilian use. This is also the focus of future research, and our research work will not stop.

"The sail is full of wind, and the waves are running." Now, Zhang Guoliang, standing at the commanding heights of the industry, will not forget his original intention, bear in mind his mission, and set his mind on the new journey. At the same time, he expects more young people to join him in carrying out this heavy responsibility of the state.

Zhonghui Eagle develops carbon fiber course

In September 29, 2005, we built an annual output of 220 tons of carbon fiber production line.

In May 3, 2007, the production line successfully produced the first batch of carbon fibers, and obtained 5 national patents in the research and development of equipment.

In October 24, 2007, we formed the Zhongfu divine eagle carbon fiber limited liability company, and opened the prelude to the industrialization project of 10000 ton carbon fiber.

In December 3, 2008, the 1000 ton carbon fiber production line was successfully put into operation in the first phase of the 10000 ton carbon fiber industrialization project.

In 2010, a large-scale production project of 2500 tons of raw silk and 1000 tons of T300 carbon fiber was approved by the state level, marking that China has achieved large-scale production of domestic carbon fiber, and the Zhongfu Eagle has also become the largest carbon fiber production enterprise in China.

In September 5, 2012, it took the lead in breaking the high performance of polyacrylonitrile in China. carbon fibre The production of dry spray wet spinning process has become the only industrial production of dry spray wet spinning SYT45 grade (equivalent to T700) carbon fiber industry in China.

In September 23, 2013, the "dry jet wet spinning SYT45 high performance carbon fiber engineering key technology and equipment research and development" project has achieved the leading level in the world through the national appraisal, and has reached the advanced level of similar products in the world. It has become the only enterprise in the world and the world's third difficult tackling technology for dry jet wet spinning.

In June 20, 2015, "high performance dry jet wet spinning carbon fiber key technology and kiloton scale engineering" project was approved by the national level, and made the domestic carbon fiber into a new process. In September, T800 carbon fibers, which reached the level of aerospace products, achieved mass production.

In May 2016, the 1000 ton T800 production line was put into operation, and the first international scale T700/T800 carbon fiber production line with international advanced level was built, leading the progress of domestic carbon fiber industry.

In 2018, 100 tons of T1000 carbon was developed independently. fibre The production line has been put into operation and running smoothly, which indicates that China's high performance carbon fiber has reached a new stage and has entered a new era of higher quality development.