A technological breakthrough covering the entire polyester fiber value chain has elevated China's chemical fiber industry to a new level of independent innovation. The 2025 National Science and Technology Awards unveiled that the project 'Key Technologies for Green and Smart Manufacturing of the Polyester Fiber Industrial Chain,' led by Tongkun Group and completed jointly with Donghua University and nine other units, won the First Class of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. This marks the third time a textile/chenille project has received this top honor, following carbon fiber industrialization in 2017 and smart yarn dyeing in 2014.
Background
Polyester fiber is the 'industrial staple' of the textile industry. China produces 70% of the world's chemical fibers, with polyester ranking first in volume. The core value of this award-winning project lies not in optimizing a single link, but in a systemic upgrade of the entire chain from PTA to polyester to spinning and texturing. After more than a decade of industry-academia collaboration, led by Donghua University researcher Wang Huaping with deep involvement from Professor Zhu Meifang's team, the project leveraged the resources of the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Fiber Materials and integrated expertise from materials, textiles, information, and mechanical engineering.
Technological breakthroughs span three dimensions: in green manufacturing, it pioneered a direct PTA-PET coupling low-carbon model, developing eco-friendly titanium-based catalysts to replace traditional heavy metal catalysts, and established full lifecycle green standards; in smart manufacturing, it achieved large-scale localization of DCS control systems, creating a replicable upgrade blueprint; in service-oriented manufacturing, it built a 'multi-head, multi-tail' serial-parallel polymerization platform, enabling modular customization of differentiated products and coordinated multi-region production.
To date, the project has formed a complete IP portfolio including 76 authorized invention patents, 10 software copyrights, and 14 national/industry standards. An expert panel assessed the overall technology as internationally leading.
Industry Impact
What does this award mean for the textile chemical fiber industry? First, it establishes technological leadership. Over the past decade, 28 textile-related projects have won National Science and Technology Awards, covering specialty fibers, smart equipment, and green dyeing. But for polyester fiber—the largest-volume chemical fiber—a first-class award for its full-chain technology was conspicuously absent. This award fills that gap and signals that China's independent technology system for general fibers is largely complete.
Economically, the project's results have been rolled out in industrial bases in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Xinjiang, and at over 10 enterprises, generating cumulative new sales of over 200 billion RMB, profits and taxes over 10 billion RMB, and export earnings of $1.8 billion. Tongkun Group also became one of the first national 'Zero-Waste Enterprise' models and a National Service-oriented Manufacturing Demonstration Enterprise. These figures reflect substantial reductions in energy consumption and defect rates, directly benefiting downstream fabric and garment companies through better cost control and quality consistency.
Concurrently, Donghua University also received the International Science and Technology Cooperation Award of the People's Republic of China, awarded to Prof. Elsa Reichmanis of Lehigh University. She has long promoted US-China scientific exchanges, deeply engaged in Donghua's fiber materials discipline, helped train multiple national-level talent program recipients, and served as academic committee chair for several editions of the International Conference on Advanced Fibers and Polymer Materials. This award underscores the rising global influence of China's fiber materials research.