While most attention remains on the raw material bottleneck of carbon fiber, an appraisal meeting in Shaoxing is quietly shifting the industry's coordinates. The 5000-tonne DMSO dry-jet wet-spinning PAN-based precursor complete equipment and process passed expert appraisal, with overall technology recognized as internationally advanced, and two metrics—DMSO recovery steam consumption and polymerization kettle temperature uniformity—reaching globally leading levels. This means the competitive dimension of domestic carbon fiber is moving from material performance to equipment efficiency and cost control.
Event Background
Precursor is called the 'gene' of carbon fiber performance, and its preparation equipment and process have long been a bottleneck for China's high-end autonomous supply. Jinggong Technology, together with Zhejiang Huachuang Carbon Fiber Technology Co., Ltd., Donghua University, and Zhejiang University of Technology, spent two years on concentrated research and completed industrial verification in Shaoxing. The appraisal not only affirms a single enterprise but also reflects a new collaborative innovation model in the domestic carbon fiber industry—equipment manufacturing leaders joining forces with university basic research and provincial innovation platforms to directly target engineering scaling pain points.
From technical details, several numbers deserve repeated consideration. The 60m³ large-capacity polymerization reactor achieves temperature uniformity of ±0.4°C, solving the classic engineering problem of heat transfer lag and local mixing deficiency in high-viscosity polymerization systems; under conditions of 60°C and about 1.6MPa, the pressure deviation of high-viscosity PAN dope at the end is controlled within ±1%, and the spinneret outlet pressure fluctuation reaches 1‰, directly determining filament uniformity. These indicators are not laboratory data but achieved at 5000 tonnes/year capacity, meaning the distance from R&D to mass production has been significantly compressed.
Industry Impact
For downstream carbon fiber producers, the spillover effect of this equipment first appears in cost structure. DMSO recovery rate is not less than 99.5%, recovery steam consumption is not higher than 2.2t/t, recovery purity reaches 99.88%, and wastewater solvent residue is less than 100ppm—the breakthrough in solvent recovery directly lowers precursor manufacturing costs, and precursor cost accounts for more than 40% of total carbon fiber cost. When solvent consumption decreases, energy consumption and environmental treatment costs per ton of precursor fall simultaneously, opening space for carbon fiber applications in price-sensitive fields like wind turbine blades and pressure vessels.
More far-reaching is the impact on supply chain security. Previously, high-end precursor equipment relied on imports, with long lead times, high maintenance costs, and constrained technology iteration. Now domestic complete equipment achieves 5000-tonne capacity, with process speed reaching 280m/min and over 3.5x high-temperature steam drawing ratio, providing a 'plug-and-play' alternative for domestic carbon fiber enterprises to expand production. For buyers, equipment localization brings not only price negotiation leverage but also enhanced supply chain resilience—in a context where carbon fiber demand grows over 20% annually, whoever controls equipment initiative gains an advantage in capacity competition.
The MOM intelligent production management system and central control visualization platform make large-scale precursor production visible, traceable, manageable, and energy-controllable. This marks a shift from experience-driven to data-driven production, meaning more stable batch consistency for downstream users. For aerospace and automotive composite companies adopting domestic carbon fiber, traceable quality data is a key support for certification, and this hidden value may be more strategically significant than equipment parameters themselves.