Analysis of the hottest global carbon fiber techno

Analysis of global carbon fiber technology development and Its Enlightenment to China

Abstract: carbon fiber is a new high molecular inorganic fiber material with carbon content of more than 95%, high strength and high modulus fiber. It has excellent mechanical properties and is widely used in aerospace, rail transit, vehicle manufacturing, weapons and equipment and other fields. Carbon fiber research and development has been listed as a national strategic emerging industry in China. This paper briefly summarizes the R & D situation of the main R & D countries/regions in the field of carbon fiber technology, and analyzes the development experience of the United States, Japan, Europe, South Korea and other advanced countries/regions in carbon fiber technology; Based on the bibliometric analysis method, the annual trend of papers and patent output, leading R & D institutions and research hotspots of global carbon fiber research since 2010 are analyzed to reflect the competitive situation of major R & D countries/regions and institutions of carbon fiber technology; It also scanned the latest developments and technological progress of carbon fiber technology research and development since 2015 to reveal cutting-edge research and development trends. Finally, the paper puts forward some suggestions for the research and development of carbon fiber technology in China, so as to provide consulting suggestions for the future research and development decision-making layout of carbon fiber technology in China

1 introduction

carbon fiber is an inorganic polymer fiber inorganic new material with a carbon content of more than 95%. It has excellent basic physical and chemical properties such as low density, high strength, high temperature resistance, high chemical stability, fatigue resistance, abrasion resistance and so on. It also has high vibration attenuation, good electrical and thermal conductivity, electromagnetic shielding performance and low coefficient of thermal expansion. These excellent properties make carbon fiber widely used in aerospace, rail transit, vehicle manufacturing, weapons and equipment, engineering machinery, infrastructure construction, marine engineering, petroleum engineering, wind energy, sporting goods and other fields

the main core technology, process and production capacity of carbon fiber are mainly controlled by Japan, the United States and a few developed countries and regions in Europe. Moreover, due to its high technology content and high profit return, western countries have imposed a strict technical blockade on China for a long time. Based on the national strategic needs of carbon fiber materials and the urgent situation of international technology blockade, China has listed it as one of the core technologies of emerging industries that are mainly supported. In the national "12th Five Year" science and technology plan, the preparation and application technology of high-performance carbon fiber is one of the core technologies of strategic emerging industries supported by the state. In May, 2015, the State Council officially issued "made in China 2025", vigorously promoting and developing new materials as one of the key areas, among which high-performance structural materials and advanced composite materials are the development priorities in the field of new materials. In October, 2015, the Ministry of industry and information technology officially released the "made in China 2025 technology roadmap in key areas", taking "high-performance fibers and their composites" as the key strategic materials, and the goal in 2020 is "domestic carbon fiber composites meet the technical requirements of major equipment such as large aircraft". In November 2016, the State Council issued the 13th five year plan for the development of national strategic emerging industries, which clearly pointed out to strengthen the upstream and downstream cooperation and support of the new material industry, carry out collaborative application pilot demonstration in carbon fiber composites and other fields, and build a collaborative application platform. In January 2017, the Ministry of industry and information technology, the national development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of science and technology, and the Ministry of Finance jointly formulated the development guide for new materials industry, proposing that by 2020, "more than 70 key new materials will be industrialized and applied in the fields of carbon fiber composites, high-quality special steel, advanced light alloy materials, etc., and a process equipment support system matching the development level of China's new materials industry will be established."

because carbon fiber and its composites play an important role in national defense and people's livelihood, many experts have focused on the analysis of its development and research trends. Zhou Hong summarized the scientific and technological contributions made by American scientists in the early stage of the development of high-performance carbon fiber technology, and scanned and reported the 16 main application fields and recent technological progress of carbon fiber; Wei Xin and others summarized the production process, performance, application and current technological development of polyacrylonitrile based carbon fiber, and put forward constructive opinions on the problems existing in the development of domestic carbon fiber. In addition, many people have also carried out research on the metrological analysis of papers and patents in the field of carbon fiber and its composites. For example, Ma Xianglin and others analyzed the distribution of patentees and application fields of carbon fiber patents in China from 1998 to 2017 from the perspective of metrology; Based on the innograph platform, Yang Sisi and others searched and counted the global carbon fiber cloth patents, and analyzed the annual development trend of patents, patentees, patent technology hotspots and core patents of the technology

from the development track of carbon fiber research, China's research has almost started at the same time as the world, but the development is slow. The production scale and quality of high-performance carbon fiber are far behind that of foreign countries. There is an urgent need to speed up the research and development process, advance the strategic layout, and seize the opportunities for future industrial development. Therefore, this paper first investigates the project layout of various countries in the field of carbon fiber research, in order to understand the R & D route planning of various countries; Secondly, because the basic research and applied research of carbon fiber are extremely important for the technological research and development of carbon fiber, we conduct metrological analysis from the academic research results - SCI papers and applied research results - patents at the same time, so as to comprehensively understand the research and development progress in the field of carbon fiber; It also scans the recent scientific research trends in this field to peek at the international cutting-edge R & D progress. Finally, based on the above research results, suggestions are put forward for the research and development route in the field of carbon fiber in China

2 layout of carbon fiber research projects in major countries/regions

the main production countries/regions of carbon fiber include Japan, the United States, South Korea, some European countries and Taiwan, China. At the initial stage of the development of carbon fiber technology, technologically advanced countries have realized the importance of this material, and have carried out strategic layout to vigorously promote the research and development of carbon fiber materials

2.1 Japan

Japan is the country with the most developed carbon fiber technology. The carbon fiber output of Toray, Toho and Mitsubishi Riyo in Japan accounts for about 70% - 80% of the global market share. Nevertheless, Japan still attaches great importance to maintaining its advantages in this field, especially the research and development of high-performance PAN based carbon fibers and energy and environment-friendly related technologies, and gives strong human and financial support. It takes this as a strategic project that should be promoted in many basic policies, including the "basic energy plan", "economic growth strategic outline" and the "Kyoto Protocol". Based on the basic national energy and environmental policies, the Ministry of economy, trade and industry of Japan proposed the "research and development program of energy-saving technologies". With the support of the above policies, Japan's carbon fiber industry can more effectively concentrate resources from all parties and promote the solution of common problems in the carbon fiber industry

"development of innovative new structural materials and other technologies" (2013-2022) is a project implemented under Japan's "future development and research plan", with the main goal of significantly realizing the lightweight of transportation vehicles (vehicle weight reduction by half), to carry out the development of necessary innovative structural materials technology and the combination technology of different materials, and finally realize its practical application. After taking over the research and development project in 2014, the Industrial Technology Comprehensive Development Organization (NEDO) formulated several sub projects. Among them, the carbon fiber research project is safe and hazard free. The conditions for using aluminum alloy cables are: aluminum alloy cables that meet the standard requirements and supporting aluminum alloy connectors that are consistent with the cable performance. The overall goal of "innovative carbon fiber basic research and development" is to develop new carbon fiber precursor compounds; Clarify the formation mechanism of carbonation structure; Develop and standardize evaluation methods for carbon fibers. The project, led by the University of Tokyo and jointly participated by the Industrial Technology Institute (NEDO), Toray, Teijin, DONGBANG teknix and Mitsubishi Riyo, has made significant progress in January 2016, which is another major breakthrough in the field of PAN based carbon fiber in Japan after the invention of "Kondo method" in 1959

2.2 the United States

the Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) launched the advanced structural fiber project in 2006, with the purpose of convening national advantageous scientific research forces to develop the next generation of structural fibers dominated by carbon fibers. With the support of this project, the research team of Georgia Institute of technology broke through the preparation technology of raw silk in 2015, which increased its elastic modulus by 30%, marking that the United States has the development ability of the third generation of carbon fiber

in 2014, the U.S. Department of energy (DOE) announced to provide us $11.3 million funding for two projects, "multi-step catalytic process for the conversion of non edible biomass sugars to acrylonitrile" and "research and optimization of multi-channel production of biomass derived acrylonitrile", to promote research on the production of cost competitive renewable high-performance carbon fiber materials from renewable non food based raw materials such as agricultural residues and woody biomass, It plans to reduce the production cost of biomass renewable carbon fiber to less than $5/pound by 2020

in March 2017, the U.S. Department of energy once again announced that it would provide $3.74 million to support the "low-cost carbon fiber component research and development project" led by the Western Research Institute (WRI), which mainly uses coal, biomass and other resources as raw materials to develop low-cost carbon fiber components

in July 2017, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it would fund $19.4 million to support the research and development of advanced energy-efficient vehicle technology, of which $6.7 million would be used to support the preparation of low-cost carbon fibers using computational materials engineering, mainly including the development of multi-scale evaluation methods of integrated computer technology to evaluate the enthusiasm of new carbon fiber precursors, and the use of advanced molecular dynamics assisted density functional theory Machine learning and other tools to develop advanced computer tools to improve the selection efficiency of low-cost carbon fiber raw materials

2.3 Europe

the European carbon fiber industry followed Japan and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. However, due to technology, capital and other reasons, many enterprises that only produce carbon fiber did not adhere to the high growth period of carbon fiber demand after 2000, and disappeared. German SGL company is the only company in Europe that occupies a major share in the world carbon fiber market

in November 2011, the European Union launched the eucarbon project, which is committed to improving Europe's manufacturing capacity in aerospace carbon fiber and prepreg materials. The project lasted four years, with a total investment of 3.2 million euros, and successfully established the first European special carbon fiber production line for satellite and other aerospace fields in May 2017, so that Europe is expected to get rid of the import dependence on this product and ensure the safety of material supply

the EU seventh framework plan supports the "preparation of functional carbon fibers using new precursors with cost-effective and adjustable properties" (fibralspec) project (2014-2017) with 6.08 million euros. The four-year project, led by Athens National University of technology in Greece and jointly participated by Italian, British, Ukrainian and other multinational companies, is mainly committed to innovating and improving the process of continuous preparation of polyacrylonitrile based carbon fibers to achieve continuous experimental production of PAN based carbon fibers. The project has successfully completed the development and application of carbon fiber production and reinforced composite technology from renewable organic polymer resources (such as supercapacitors, rapid emergency shelters, and the development of prototype mechanical electric spin coating machines and production lines for nanofibers)

more and more industrial fields (such as automobile, wind power generation, shipbuilding) need lightweight and high-performance composites, which is a huge potential market for the carbon fiber industry