How can domestically produced carbon fiber seize the "automotive opportunity"?

Due to the advantages of carbon fiber composite materials such as light weight, high specific strength, high design freedom, and strong integration, carbon fiber composite materials have gradually become a new favorite for automotive lightweight materials. At the 2014 Beijing Auto Show not long ago, carbon fiber became another protagonist besides various luxury cars. The Bugatti Black Bess legendary limited edition is made entirely of black carbon fiber, and the Koenigsegg One:1 sports car body is equipped with carbon fiber wheels.

Due to the advantages of carbon fiber composite materials, such as light weight, high specific strength, high design freedom, and strong integration, carbon fiber composite materials have gradually become a new favorite for automotive lightweight materials. At the 2014 Beijing Auto Show, carbon fiber became another protagonist besides various luxury cars. The Bugatti Black Bess legendary limited edition is made entirely of black carbon fiber, and the Koenigsegg One:1 sports car body is equipped with carbon fiber wheels.

Normally, the vehicle's own weight consumes about 70% of the fuel. Therefore, the primary issue in reducing fuel consumption is to reduce the vehicle's own weight. The Japan Carbon Fiber Manufacturers Association once conducted a test on the life cycle of carbon fiber. Cars reinforced with carbon fiber, due to their reduced weight, not only significantly improve fuel efficiency but also indirectly reduce carbon dioxide emissions. As an environmentally friendly material, carbon fiber has attracted worldwide attention. Global automakers are fiercely competing around "carbon fiber cars," and international carbon fiber giants are expanding their capacity to seize this market with huge potential.

Luo Yifeng, president of the China New Materials Technology Association and director of the National Special Synthetic Fiber Information Center, believes that the fastest-growing demand for CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced composite materials) will be in the automotive industry. It is estimated that consumption will reach close to that of the aerospace and military fields (approximately 23,000 tons) by 2020. However, due to the gap in their own strength, Chinese carbon fiber manufacturers rarely participate in the automotive field. Only leapfrog development can seize the "automotive opportunity".

Demand for automotive carbon fiber is expected to surge.

In recent years, the application of carbon fiber composite materials in automobiles has been continuously expanding. In 2010, Toyota's Lexus LFA sports car, which used CFRP for its entire body, became a focus of attention, but its price also reached the highest among Japanese-made cars at 37.5 million yen. Subsequently, the BMW Group successfully applied CFRP to mass-produced cars by developing various technologies to improve production efficiency.

BMW's carbon fiber tow supplier is Mitsubishi Rayon of Japan. Since 2012, Mitsubishi Rayon has continuously expanded its carbon fiber industrial chain, acquiring several companies, including the Japanese CFRP parts manufacturer Challenge Company. It plans to increase equipment at its US factory after 2014, expanding its annual production capacity from approximately 10,000 tons to 20,000 tons, and increasing supply to its major customer, BMW.

BMW is also cooperating with the automotive carbon fiber producer SGL Carbon (SGL), planning to invest over 100 million euros to increase carbon fiber production from 3,000 tons to 6,000 tons annually. This will meet the growing market demand for BMW's i-series electric vehicles and will also be used in the BMW 7 Series, expected to be launched at the end of next year.

Toray Industries, Inc. of Japan acquired Zoltek, the world's third-largest carbon fiber company, for nearly 70 billion yen last September. This move propelled Toray to become the world's largest carbon fiber supplier, increasing its global market share to 30%. Teijin Limited, the world's second-largest carbon fiber manufacturer, has collaborated with General Motors on carbon fiber technology utilization and is expected to build a new factory in the United States in 2014 to supply carbon fiber for mass-produced vehicles.

Joint R&D becomes mainstream.

Due to increased demand, automotive applications have become a focus of intensified R&D for major carbon fiber manufacturers, and related carbon fiber composite material production technologies are constantly making new breakthroughs.

Carbon fiber is made by "baking" and carbonizing fibers such as propylene in an oxygen-free state. Carbon fiber is arranged or woven into sheets on a flat surface and then reinforced with resin to become CFRP. CFRP used in aircraft, etc., is heated and pressurized in a special autoclave during molding to harden the component. While this produces extremely high strength, molding takes several hours and is expensive. The CFRP used in the BMW i3 uses a new process that does not require pressurization or heating—RTM (Resin Transfer Molding). This involves placing pre-formed carbon fiber cloth into a mold and injecting resin under high pressure to bond the fiber and resin, allowing for molding within 10 minutes.

To achieve lightweight and high-strength automotive wheels, Mitsubishi Rayon and wheel manufacturer ENKEI Corporation jointly developed wheels that bond CFRP and aluminum alloy. The CFRP compression molding time can be shortened to about 10 minutes. UCHIPA Corporation, a Japanese CFRP manufacturer, has introduced a CFRP automated production line, including three molding methods: thermosetting resin prepreg pressing, thermoplastic resin RTM molding, and thermoplastic resin prepreg pressing. They have also established a research institute at Nagoya University with Lamborghini to mass-produce automotive parts and unmanned helicopter blades, etc.

Toray Industries, Toyota, and the University of Tokyo are already jointly developing a fully carbon fiber car, promoting research on processing technologies, etc. It is expected that by 2020 at the earliest, new energy vehicles with 60% weight reduction and improved safety will be put into practical application.

Currently, many automobile factories are cooperating directly with carbon fiber manufacturers to produce usable parts. For example, Evonik, Johnson Controls, Jacob Plastic, and Teijin Toho Tenax are jointly developing CFRP; TenCate of the Netherlands and Toray of Japan have reached a long-term supply agreement; and Toray and Daimler have reached a joint R&D agreement to develop CFRP components for Mercedes-Benz.

China has also made achievements in this field. The Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, jointly undertook the "Research on Forming Technology of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Thermoplastic Composite Material Structural Parts" project. This project developed a set of fully independent intellectual property rights continuous carbon fiber composite material rapid hot-pressing molding equipment, which can realize the automated preparation of continuous carbon fiber composite material automotive parts with an efficiency of 56 pieces/day. Large-size composite automotive floor panels were also prepared using APA6 and PCB ton thermoplastic monomers via in-situ polymerization molding.

Leapfrog development is key to seizing opportunities.

Following the establishment of energy-saving and emission reduction targets for automobiles in 2015 and 2020 by the US, EU, and Japanese governments, China's "Development Plan for Energy-Saving and New Energy Vehicle Industry (2012-2020)" also proposed targets of 6.9 L/Km and 5.0 L/Km for the average fuel consumption of new cars by automakers in 2015 and 2020, respectively. To this end, the "2014 International Symposium on Automotive Lightweighting and CFRP Technology Application," held in Shanghai on April 22 this year, focused on accelerating the industrialization of CFRP automobiles in China and will establish the "China Automotive Non-metallic Materials Lightweighting Strategic Alliance".

However, China's carbon fiber manufacturers lag significantly behind their Japanese and American counterparts in technology, and currently lack the capacity for mass production of high-modulus carbon fiber. Chinese carbon fiber composite materials are mainly used in mid-to-low-end markets such as sports and leisure, and building reinforcement, rarely in the automotive industry. Zhang Dingjin, chairman of China Composites Group Corporation, stated that although there are numerous technological challenges to the large-scale use of carbon fiber in the automotive industry, the application prospects of carbon fiber in this field are broad. The goal is to continuously improve manufacturing technology, overcome technical barriers from raw materials to processing, and achieve the best performance at the lowest cost. To achieve a breakthrough in automotive applications, China's carbon fiber manufacturers need to focus on cooperation with resin suppliers, intermediate product manufacturers, and equipment manufacturers.

Luo Yifeng indicated that new technologies and processes for carbon fiber are constantly emerging internationally, and the trend is towards higher efficiency, superior performance, and lower costs. The emergence of super carbon fiber has broken the old concept that carbon fiber is a brittle material, expanding its applications to fields such as bulletproofing; the emergence of relatively inexpensive carbon core-silicon carbide fiber (C-Si carbon fiber) will further expand the application of carbon fiber in high-end and general industrial fields; and the emergence of new CFRP rapid prototyping curing agents can reduce the molding time of carbon fiber reinforced thermosetting resins to less than 1 minute, further expanding its applications in cutting-edge and general industrial fields. China should take a leapfrog development path for carbon fiber and CFRP, adopting reliable technologies to surpass its competitors in the short term.