China's Carbon Fiber Strikes Back: When Japan and the US Refuse to Sell, Shanxi in China Produces

The tireless efforts of several batches of researchers have helped China achieve the transformation of high - end carbon fiber from "nothing" to "something" and from "weak" to "strong", enabling Chinese carbon fiber to change from being "held back by others" to "occupying half of the global production capacity" today.

Carbon fiber was once described by Shi Changxu, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, as something as important as a chip.

It weighs only a quarter of steel, but its strength is seven to ten times that of steel. It can withstand temperatures of over a thousand degrees in the space environment and remain stable at minus 200 degrees.

Such superior performance has made it the "king of modern materials".

On a large scale, it can be used to manufacture the high - temperature - resistant shells of intercontinental missiles and launch vehicles, the lightweight airframes of airplanes, and the strong cockpits of top - level sports cars.

On a small scale, it is the carbon plate in marathon running shoes that acts like a spring to assist, the lightweight fishing rod easily held by anglers, and can also be used to make road bicycles that can be carried upstairs with one hand.

Carbon fiber is also indispensable in the blades of wind turbines, the fronts of high - speed trains, the hydrogen storage tanks of hydrogen - powered vehicles, and the aircraft in the "low - altitude economy".

However, once upon a time, carbon fiber was a painful point for China, being firmly restricted. Japanese and American companies led by Toray Industries of Japan occupied most of the global market share through years of technological monopoly.

01

Around 2005, because high - performance carbon fiber is a typical "dual - use" sensitive material, Japan and the United States imposed export controls on China. You could buy a Boeing 787 on the market, but you couldn't buy the high - end carbon fiber used to build the airplane, let alone the underlying scientific research technology.

During those years, the domestic large - aircraft project was in the planning stage, and national defense weapons were developing rapidly. New - generation launch vehicles and satellites were in urgent need of upgrading. In many high - end manufacturing fields, the blueprints were drawn, but due to the lack of carbon fiber, they were in a dilemma of having "no rice to cook".

Just at this critical moment, a unit in Taiyuan called the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry was invited to a meeting at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The full name of the institute is the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since its establishment in 1954, they have been researching coal - based carbon materials, including carbon black and activated carbon, and have made remarkable achievements in the field of carbon materials.

The leaders of the Chinese Academy of Sciences asked Sun Yuhan, the director of the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry, a very direct question: "The country is in urgent need of aerospace - grade carbon fiber. Can you take on this scientific research task?"

Sun Yuhan was not confident because carbon fiber was completely different from the carbon materials they had worked on before, and the complexity of the process was on a completely different level. To achieve mass production of T300 carbon fiber that met the aerospace - grade standard, there were very real challenges in process stability and equipment precision.

The so - called T300 is a carbon fiber strength grading system established by Toray Industries of Japan.

T300 is an entry - level model for aerospace applications. In addition, there are T700, T800, and even T1000. The "T" represents tensile strength. The larger the number behind, the higher the tensile strength and the greater the manufacturing difficulty.

The reason why the standard was set by Toray Industries of Japan is that Toray played a foundational role in the commercial application of carbon fiber.

Carbon fiber was first developed by the United States during the Cold War in the arms race with the Soviet Union. However, in the civilian field, Toray Industries of Japan reaped the benefits of this research.

In 1971, Toray heavily invested in the carbon fiber field. Relying on other businesses to "subsidize" the losses for more than twenty years, it finally achieved great success in the 1990s with the emergence of the Boeing 787.

The Boeing 787 is the first large - scale airliner in human history with half of its fuselage made of carbon fiber. The fuel cost saved by weight reduction using carbon fiber alone is an astronomical figure. And the Boeing 787 uses Toray's products. Since then, carbon fiber has become a standard feature of modern airliners, and Toray has become the industry leader. The entire European and American industries also began to pay attention to this field.

Toray also established a complete set of technical evaluation systems, and concepts such as T300, T700, and T800 were promoted and became the common language in the industry.

By 2005, leading Japanese and American companies such as Toray, Toho in Japan, and Hexcel in the United States had occupied most of the carbon fiber market share.

Facing the export restrictions of Japanese and American companies, Sun Yuhan, on behalf of the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry, took on this task and made a solemn commitment: to mass - produce T300 - grade products before June 30, 2008.

Shanxi dared to take on this difficult task because it held a key card - the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry started researching carbon fiber as early as the 1960s and 1970s and was one of the earliest carbon fiber research institutions in China.

Actually, China's start in the carbon fiber field was not late. At that time, not only the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry but also many domestic scientific research institutions were involved.

But unfortunately, decades passed, and we were still in the embarrassing situation of "having samples but no products". High - performance sample filaments could indeed be made in the laboratory, but they would break on the assembly line, and mass production was never achieved.

It wasn't until 2001 that Shi Changxu, the 80 - year - old "father of Chinese materials science", got anxious. He wrote a letter to the central government, pointing out painfully that there were two major hidden dangers in China's national defense science and technology: one was microelectronic chips, and the other was high - performance carbon fiber.

This letter later led to the establishment of the carbon fiber special project of the National "863 Program". It can be said that this task from the Chinese Academy of Sciences was also related to Academician Shi's appeal.

02

After taking on the task, the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry quickly assembled the elite forces of the entire institute, and a technological battle against carbon fiber officially began in Shanxi.

In order to catch up within the three - year deadline, the team adopted a bold approach: they abandoned the then internationally mainstream "continuous polymerization method" and adopted the "batch polymerization method", which was easier to control variables.

The "continuous polymerization method" is the mainstream approach of Japanese and American companies. It took Toray Industries of Japan five years from developing the raw material filaments to producing T300, and another ten years for subsequent improvements.

But the problem is that once something goes wrong in the middle, you have no idea which step is wrong. Just troubleshooting and debugging the equipment may take a long time. The "batch polymerization method" involves conducting experiments step by step. If this step is wrong, you can adjust it immediately and try the next experiment soon.

This approach also means that in carbon fiber research, it is not just a few parameters but a large number of mutually influencing process parameters. Any change in one parameter will affect the overall result.

This requires researchers to conduct repeated experiments, record details carefully, and eliminate wrong parameters bit by bit.

Of course, Shanxi was not fighting alone.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences organized several powerful affiliated units to jointly participate in the project. For example, the Institute of Chemistry developed the oil agent, and the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry and the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry were responsible for developing the sizing agent.

Finally, the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry completed this arduous challenge.

After countless failures, the team finally successfully mass - produced T300 carbon fiber with stable performance before the final deadline in June 2008.

The successful production of domestic T300 means that China has broken the foreign technological blockade and has the ability to independently meet national defense needs.

03

However, T300 is just the entry ticket to high - end carbon fiber. For both the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry and Shanxi, it is only a starting point, not an end.

Meanwhile, other domestic enterprises such as Zhongfu Shenying, Guangwei Composite Materials, and Hengshen have been continuously improving in the mid - to high - end models, and the mass production of domestic T700 and T800 has gradually become stable.

What lies ahead for the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry is another peak to climb - T1000.

T1000 is one of the highest - performance models in the current carbon fiber industry, representing the highest technological level in carbon fiber manufacturing. Its tensile strength can reach 6400 megapascals. A T1000 - grade carbon fiber that is dozens of times thinner than a human hair can bear a load of 200 kilograms.

To overcome T1000, Zhang Shouchun, a new - generation researcher at the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry, led his team to conduct continuous research in the laboratory in Taiyuan for many years and gradually mastered the laboratory preparation technology for T1000.

But soon, a real - world problem that all materials scientists face emerged: just because it can be made in the laboratory does not mean it can be stably produced in the factory.

There is an insurmountable engineering gap between producing a few grams of samples in a beaker and mass - producing products on an assembly line. The strength of a single scientific research unit is no longer sufficient to cross this threshold.

It was at this stage that a new opportunity emerged, that is, Shanxi Huayang Group.

Huayang Group, formerly Yangquan Coal Industry, was once a Fortune Global 500 company and has the largest anthracite production base in China. But this state - owned enterprise giant also faced huge pressure to transform from a coal enterprise. So, they decided to enter the carbon fiber field.

Huayang's decision was not made on a whim. They have two core advantages.

One is, of course, money. If coal bosses are rich, then Huayang is a well - known state - owned coal enterprise. Secondly, they have a complete coal chemical industry chain and production experience.

The Datong Municipal Government also strongly supported Huayang's transformation. Datong's development once highly relied on the coal industry, but now they must find a new way out.

On one side is an industrial giant with funds and engineering knowledge but lacking core technology; on the other side is Zhang Shouchun's team with top - level technology but lacking industrialization capabilities.

So, they hit it off.

In 2022, the Datong Municipal Government, Huayang New Material Technology Group, and the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, jointly signed a cooperation agreement for a carbon - based new material project to build a high - performance carbon fiber production base in Datong.

04

The manufacturing of T1000 uses a process that is internationally recognized as the most advanced but also the most difficult, called "dry - jet wet spinning".

Simply put, this technology is like squeezing toothpaste. It squeezes out polymer glue, allows the sprayed filaments to "fly" a short distance in the air, and then sprays them into a coagulation bath.

This distance is extremely short, usually only in the millimeter range, but don't underestimate these few millimeters. It has always been a nightmare for practitioners.

Imagine a large - scale device with thousands of micron - sized micropores densely distributed on the spinneret. High - pressure fluid gushes out at a very high speed.

This is equivalent to tens of thousands of liquid streams that are dozens of times thinner than a human hair passing through a few millimeters of air layer simultaneously without the slightest tremor.

In an industrial environment, the loud noise of large machines will cause vibrations, the air - conditioning wind in the workshop will cause airflow disturbances, and even the liquid surface itself will have tiny waves.

Once one filament trembles or breaks in the air, it will directly affect hundreds or thousands of surrounding filaments, leading to fluctuations in fineness, defects, or even filament breakage. Expensive raw materials may be scrapped in batches.

Toray spent many years on stabilizing the production line. This is why the "dry - jet wet spinning" technology has always been called the "watershed process in the carbon fiber industry". And precisely for this reason, this technology has been most tightly blocked from China.

At this time, Huayang's overall planning ability as an established state - owned enterprise was demonstrated. It directly invited Saiding Engineering to jointly tackle the problem.

Saiding is a top - level chemical engineering enterprise in China. Its core function is to convert data into specific design drawings and equipment manufacturing standards and coordinate the construction of the entire production line.

The three parties closely cooperated to conduct domestic research on core equipment such as high - temperature carbonization furnaces at thousands of degrees and adapt various process parameters to the industrial level.

To solve the problem of large - scale production from the laboratory to the factory, Zhang Shouchun led a technical team of dozens of people to stay beside the roaring machines for a long time in the extremely cold winter of minus 20 degrees in Datong for debugging.

After continuous round - the - clock work, they built this production equipment system, eliminated hundreds of engineering hidden dangers such as pipeline slope and poor fluid flow one by one, finally tamed this complex production line, clarified the production process, and made the previously unpredictable process stable and controllable.

In November, which has just passed, this production line completed the continuous operation verification and was successfully trial - produced. The first - phase project has an annual production capacity of about 200 tons.

This means that China has successfully broken through in the field of ultra - high - strength T1000 carbon fiber, enabling domestic carbon fiber to enter the international advanced level in terms of technology. The carbon fiber supply for domestic large - scale airliners, launch vehicles, and intercontinental missiles is no longer restricted by others.

So far, China has formed the "first echelon" of high - performance carbon fiber with Huayang Group, Zhongfu Shenying, and Guangwei Composite Materials as the core, comprehensively covering high - end technologies and products from T800 to T1000.

05

It took exactly 20 years for the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry to go from basic research in 2005 to overcome the "pearl on the industrial crown" in 2025.

Behind this is the tireless effort of several batches of researchers, which has helped China achieve the transformation of high - end carbon fiber from "nothing" to "something" and from "weak" to "strong", enabling Chinese carbon fiber to change from being "held back by others" to "occupying half of the global production capacity" today.

Many people's impression of Shanxi still remains on "old vinegar" and "coal bosses", but it is precisely this seemingly traditional land that has given birth to the most cutting - edge high - tech materials.

So why does Shanxi play such an important role in the localization of high - end carbon fiber?

This is because, in essence, carbon fiber is still "carbon".

In the past, Shanxi's coal resources made it the most important energy base. It once made great contributions to national construction but also had to bear the subsequent heavy burden.

But today, the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry and Huayang Group have actually completed an industrial upgrade spanning half a century: they no longer just use coal as boiler fuel but turn it into chemical materials.

From the black coal deep underground to the T1000 carbon fiber flying into space, although they have the same origin, the value has increased thousands or even tens of thousands of times.

This is the transformation courage demonstrated by a traditional energy - rich province in the face of the turning point of the times.

This land of Shanxi once warmed the whole of China with coal; now, it supports the backbone of major national equipment with carbon fiber.

References:

Key Technologies for the Industrialization of Dry - Jet Wet - Spun High - Strength/Medium - Modulus Carbon Fiber: Enabling China to Use Its Own Carbon Fiber  China Chemical Industry News