China's polyester fiber industry chain is undergoing a deep, technology-driven restructuring. The 2025 National Science and Technology Progress First Prize has been awarded to the project 'Key Technologies for Green and Smart Manufacturing in the Polyester Fiber Industry Chain,' led by Tongkun Group and involving ten units including Donghua University. This is not a simple technical commendation but a concentrated endorsement of over a decade of independent innovation in the chemical fiber sector.
Technical System: From 'Industrial Staple' to Independent Control
Polyester fiber is known as the 'industrial staple' of the textile industry, accounting for the largest share of China's chemical fiber output, which itself represents 70% of global production. The technical level of polyester fiber directly determines the competitiveness of the entire textile industry. For a long time, key technologies in this field were controlled by others, especially in high-end differentiated products and green manufacturing. This award-winning project addresses these pain points by building an independent and controllable advanced manufacturing system from three dimensions: green, smart, and service-oriented.
In green manufacturing, the project pioneered a PTA-PET direct coupling low-carbon production model and developed environmentally friendly titanium-based catalysts, replacing traditional toxic heavy metal catalysts. It also established full lifecycle green standards for polyester fiber. This means a significant downward shift in the carbon emission curve from raw materials to finished products, directly benefiting downstream fabric companies' low-carbon procurement. The smart manufacturing dimension completed full-process automation equipment upgrades, achieving large-scale domestic substitution of DCS control systems. The integrated control system for process and quality has improved both production efficiency and yield rates. The service-oriented manufacturing dimension created a 'multi-head, multi-tail' series-parallel composite polymerization technology platform, enabling modular customization of differentiated products and multi-regional collaborative agile manufacturing.
Industry Impact: The Conduction Effect Behind 200 Billion Yuan in Sales
The ultimate value of technological breakthroughs lies in their industrial application. According to publicly available industry data, the project's results have been implemented in industrial bases in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Xinjiang, as well as in over ten enterprises, generating cumulative new sales of over 200 billion yuan, profits and taxes of over 10 billion yuan, and export earnings of 1.8 billion US dollars. These figures reflect a systematic improvement in the efficiency of the entire polyester fiber chain. For upstream raw material companies, green catalytic technology reduces energy consumption and pollution treatment costs. For midstream spinning and texturing processes, smart equipment reduces manual intervention and significantly lowers defect rates. For downstream fabric and garment companies, differentiated customization capabilities mean more flexible responses to fast-changing market demands.
More importantly, the replicability of this technical system provides a standardized upgrade path for the industry. The project has produced 76 authorized invention patents, 10 software copyrights, and 14 national and industry standards, meaning other chemical fiber companies can refer to these standards for technological transformation, accelerating the digital transformation of the entire sector. Tongkun Group, leveraging the project's demonstration effect, has been selected as one of the first national 'Zero-Waste Enterprise' typical cases and recognized as a 'National Service-oriented Manufacturing Demonstration Enterprise' and a 'National Excellent Smart Manufacturing Demonstration Factory.'
Industry-Academia Collaboration: A Decade of Research and Global Cooperation
The first completer of this award-winning project is Wang Huaping, a researcher at Donghua University, with deep involvement from the scientific team of Zhu Meifang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The project relies on the State Key Laboratory for Advanced Fiber Materials at Donghua University, integrating multidisciplinary forces from materials science, textile technology, information intelligence, and mechanical engineering, and has been developed through over a decade of collaborative research. This long-term, cross-disciplinary industry-academia model is a typical path for technological breakthroughs in the textile chemical fiber field.
Concurrently, Donghua University also received the People's Republic of China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award, granted to Professor Elsa Reichmanis, a distinguished chair professor at Lehigh University in the United States. She has long promoted Sino-US scientific exchanges, engaging in joint graduate training and research collaboration with Donghua University in fiber materials, co-authoring 18 high-level papers, and serving as the academic committee chair for the Advanced Fiber and Polymer Materials International Conference. The depth of this international cooperation indicates that China's fiber materials are transitioning from 'following' to 'running alongside' and even 'leading' on the global stage.