A technological breakthrough covering the entire polyester fiber industry chain has pushed China's chemical fiber industry to new heights of independent innovation. In the 2025 National Science and Technology Awards, the project 'Key Technologies for Green and Intelligent Manufacturing of Polyester Fiber Industry Chain,' led by Tongkun Group and completed with Donghua University, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, and seven other institutions, won the first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. Following the 2017 carbon fiber project by Zhongfu Shenying and the 2014 package dyeing project by Kangpingna, this marks another top honor for the textile sector, but this time focusing on polyester fiber, which accounts for the largest share of chemical fiber output and has the longest industry chain, making its strategic significance more profound.
Three Dimensions of Technological Breakthrough
Polyester fiber is known as the 'industrial staple' of the textile industry. China produces 70% of the world's chemical fibers, with polyester fiber leading all types. The project was led by Wang Huaping, a researcher at Donghua University, with deep involvement from the team of Academician Zhu Meifang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. After over a decade of collaborative research, breakthroughs were achieved in three dimensions.
In green manufacturing, the project pioneered a PTA-PET direct-coupled low-carbon manufacturing model, innovatively developed environmentally friendly titanium-based catalysts and engineering application technologies, and invented crude oil-based chemical fiber oils and green oiling technologies, establishing a full lifecycle green standard for polyester fiber. This means carbon emissions from raw materials to finished products are systematically reduced, directly responding to the rigid constraints of the 'dual carbon' targets on the chemical industry.
In intelligent manufacturing, the project completed full-process automation equipment upgrades, achieved large-scale domestic substitution of DCS control systems, and established an intelligent manufacturing system integrating process and quality control. The replicability of this 'China solution' means that in the future, small and medium-sized chemical fiber enterprises can quickly achieve intelligent transformation through technology transfer without relying on imported equipment.
Service-oriented manufacturing is the most ecologically significant dimension. The project pioneered a 'multi-head multi-tail' series-parallel composite polymerization technology platform, creating a modular digital linkage system for polymerization, spinning, and texturing processes with 'one head, three tails' multi-point addition, enabling customized differentiated polyester fiber products and multi-regional collaborative agile manufacturing. This essentially resolves the long-standing contradiction between large-scale standardized production and small-batch, multi-variety demand, offering downstream fabric and apparel companies a more flexible supply chain response.
Industrial Benefits and Industry Signals
To date, the project has formed a complete independent intellectual property system including 76 authorized invention patents, 10 software copyrights, and 14 national and industry standards. An expert panel of academicians concluded that the overall technology has reached an internationally leading level.
Economically, the results have been promoted in industrial bases in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Xinjiang, as well as in over 10 enterprises in the industry, generating cumulative new sales of over 200 billion yuan, profits and taxes of over 10 billion yuan, and export earnings of 18 billion USD. The project also significantly reduced industry energy consumption and defect rates. Tongkun Group, leveraging this project, was selected as one of the first national 'Zero-Waste Enterprise' typical cases and was awarded 'National Service-oriented Manufacturing Demonstration Enterprise' and 'National Excellent-level Intelligent Manufacturing Demonstration Factory.'
For buyers and factories in the textile industry, the direct significance of this technological breakthrough is that the supply stability and quality consistency of polyester fiber will significantly improve, while production costs are expected to further decrease. Especially with the promotion of the 'multi-head multi-tail' flexible manufacturing system, the customization cycle for differentiated fibers will shorten, and minimum order quantities will decrease, allowing downstream companies to avoid high raw material premiums for small-batch orders.
Deeper Implications of the International Cooperation Award
The International Science and Technology Cooperation Award of the People's Republic of China, also announced this time, was awarded to Professor Elsa Reichmanis, a distinguished chair professor at Lehigh University in the United States. She has long been engaged in semiconductor materials research, pioneering the design of the first industrial deep ultraviolet photoresists and developing the world's first flexible semiconductor transistor. Since 2013, she has deeply cooperated with the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Fiber Materials at Donghua University, co-cultivating talents who have been selected for national talent programs, publishing 18 high-level academic papers, and promoting the International Conference on Advanced Fiber and Polymer Materials to become the world's largest fiber-themed academic event.
The awarding of this prize sends a clear signal: China's textile industry's technological innovation is no longer confined to domestic efforts but is leveraging international collaboration with top scholars and teams to achieve 'borrowed wisdom' in basic materials science. For domestic chemical fiber enterprises, this means the pace of technological iteration will further accelerate, and the internationalization of industry-academia-research collaboration will become a core competitive advantage.