By 2025, my country's new materials will achieve 10 trillion, and these three directions will definitely explode
One of the new material directions: lightweight materials
1. Carbon fiber
Carbon fiber materials are used in aerospace, wind power, sports and leisure, automobiles and other fields with their excellent properties. They are the most widely used and market-oriented materials in the field of new materials, and are known as "the king of new materials". The global carbon fiber market demand has grown rapidly in recent years, and my country has also seized the opportunity to develop into the world's second largest carbon fiber producer.
However, compared with foreign countries, my country's carbon fiber industry still has the problems of low capacity utilization, few high-end products, and difficult application and development. The downstream industry still relies heavily on imported carbon fiber products. In the current international environment, realizing the dual autonomy of carbon fiber scale production and application development is the key to enhancing my country's national defense and manufacturing strength and ensuring the stability of the supply chain.
Carbon fiber is a carbon backbone structure inorganic fiber with a carbon content higher than 90 percent formed by the pyrolysis and carbonization of organic fibers such as polyacrylonitrile (PAN) (or pitch, viscose) in a high temperature environment, as a high-performance material. Produced in the 1960s.
Carbon fiber has excellent mechanical properties and chemical stability: as the fiber with the highest specific strength (strength specific density) and the highest specific stiffness (modulus specific density) among the high-performance fibers that are currently mass-produced, carbon fiber is an important part of aerospace, wind power Ideal materials for blades, new energy vehicles and other fields with lightweight requirements. The characteristics of corrosion resistance, high temperature resistance and small expansion coefficient make it a substitute for metal materials in harsh environments; in addition, the electrical and thermal conductivity properties expand its application in the field of communication electronics.
According to the number of filaments in each bundle of carbon fibers, carbon fibers are generally divided into two categories: small tow and large tow. Small tow has better performance but higher price, and is generally used in high-tech fields such as aerospace and military industry, as well as high-end sporting goods; large tow has a lower cost and is often used in basic industries, including civil construction, transportation and energy equipment, etc. .
Global Capacity Scale and Demand Expectations
In 2020, the global carbon fiber operating capacity is 171,650 tons, an increase of 16,750 tons compared with 2019, a growth rate of 10.8 percent . The United States, China, and Japan assumed the main production capacity, accounting for 21.7 percent , 21.1 percent , and 17.0 percent , respectively. At present, the major manufacturers still have about 80,000 tons/year of unfinished expansion plans, which also reflects the manufacturers' optimistic expectations for the industry's prospects.
In terms of demand, the four major application industries of the carbon fiber market are aerospace, wind power blades, sports and leisure, and automobiles. In 2020, the four downstream industries will account for more than 70 percent of the carbon fiber demand and more than 76 percent of the output value.
Since 2015, the industry estimates that the world's carbon fiber demand has maintained a growth of about 12 percent , but due to the impact of the epidemic, the global demand for carbon fiber in 2020 will total 107,000 tons, an increase of only 3 percent compared to 2019. The total sales amount was about 2.615 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 8.8 percent , mainly due to the slump in the aviation industry caused by the epidemic, which affected the sales of high-value high-performance carbon fiber. The wind power field has become the main driving force for the industry to maintain growth, and the demand for carbon fiber has maintained an annual growth of 20 percent despite the epidemic.
In the short term, the recovery of the world aviation industry and the large-scale laying of wind power equipment in 2021 can bring the carbon fiber market back to the channel of rapid growth. In the long run, the aviation industry needs to digest the excess capacity in 2020, and wind power will continue to be the main driving force for the growth of the carbon fiber market in the future. In October 2020, representatives of more than 400 wind energy companies around the world jointly issued the "Wind Energy Beijing Declaration", planning to add more than 50 million kilowatts of installed capacity in 2020-2025.
In the context of the expansion of production by major wind power manufacturers, the application of carbon fiber in wind turbines has not yet been rolled out on a large scale, and only the world wind power giant Vestas has formed a large-scale application. As other wind power companies develop applications for carbon fiber composites, the demand for carbon fiber in the wind power industry is likely to grow exponentially. It is estimated that by 2025, the total demand for carbon fiber in the world will exceed 200,000 tons, equivalent to an annual growth rate of 13.3 percent .