China's new materials forge ahead with innovation, application

BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Limestone, ubiquitous in the Earth's crust, has been transformed into an innovative nanomaterial at facilities in north China to support a diverse array of industries with lower carbon emissions.

Stone Age New Material Technology Co., Ltd (Stone Age) in Liulin County, north China's Shanxi Province, has managed to use limestone as a raw material to produce a special nano calcium carbonate and composite titanium dioxide through advanced process technology.

The new material can be broadly used in industries such as rubber production and papermaking, replacing expensive carbon black, titanium dioxide and glass fiber, all of which consume a lot of energy and pollute heavily.

The new material industry is listed as one of the strategic industries in the resolution on further deepening reform to advance Chinese modernization which was recently adopted at the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Deemed as a promising new quality productive force, the new material industry serves as a cornerstone for the equipment and manufacturing sectors, which are essential to driving the country's economic growth.

INDUSTRIAL UPGRADING

The rich limestone resources were previously solely used to produce low value-added bulk building materials such as building stones, high calcium ash and cement clinker, resulting in a great waste of resources," said Zhang Pengyun, deputy general manager of Stone Age.

The transition is inevitable given the new circumstances. "With the slowdown in the real estate sector, the supply of stone materials has gradually outstripped the demand, compelling many quarries to scale back their operations," Zhang said, "our own quarry, for instance, had once functioned at merely half of its potential capacity."

In April 2019, his company collaborated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) to set up a laboratory. However, it wasn't until early this year that they successfully transformed the lab's innovations into market-ready products for mass production, with an investment of hundreds of millions of yuan.

The innovation pays off handsomely. One tonne of high-calcium ash was sold less than 400 yuan (about 56 U.S. dollars), whereas new materials including nano-calcium carbonate can cost 4,000 yuan now, Zhang said.

Shanxi Province, which is highly reliant on coal mining for economic development, has made great efforts to transform its industries into green and low-carbon ones. It has implemented policies to support the high quality development of the new materials industry.

The province initially created an industrial system integrating advanced metal materials, carbon-based new materials, novel inorganic non-metallic materials, bio-based new materials and other cutting-edge new materials.

There have been 287 major new material enterprises by 2023 in Shanxi Province, with a total revenue of 240 billion yuan, according to the provincial department of Industry and Information Technology.

UNLEASHING INNOVATION VITALITY

The country will be committed to consolidating the principal position of enterprises in sci-tech innovation and establishing a mechanism to cultivate and strengthen leading technology enterprises, according to the newly-adopted resolution.

By 2023, corporate-invented patents accounted for over 70 percent of all valid domestic patents in China.

China National Building Material Group Co., Ltd. (CNBM), the world's largest comprehensive building material industry group, has added 307 core invention patents in the past two years, and successfully conquered a number of "bottleneck" technologies such as carbon fiber composites for large aircraft, large-size infrared optical materials and highly efficient power generation glass.

Between 2016 and 2023, the group's annual research and development (R&D) investment reached more than 10 billion yuan, with a compound growth rate of 12.3 percent.

It developed and produced silicon nitride ceramic balls by pressing high purity silicon nitride powder into greenware and forging at a high pressure of 2,000 atm and a high temperature of 2,000 degrees Celsius.

The silicon nitride ceramic balls, with a hardness only weaker than diamond and a weight 40 percent of the same volume of steel, have been widely applied in space engines, lunar rovers, wind turbines and electric cars, said Sun Feng, general manager of Sinoma Advanced Nitride Ceramics Co., Ltd., subordinate to the CNBM.

Meanwhile, the collaborative stride between sci-tech institutions and enterprises in new material development and application has been moving ahead, with a view to promoting integrated advancements in technological and industrial innovation.

Currently, nearly 100 institutes under the CAS are carrying out research and development or promoting the application of new materials.

The Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the CAS has cooperated with more than 1,500 domestic enterprises and over 250 global institutions to realize the transformation of 93 major sci-tech achievements, such as large-size single crystal diamond, amorphous soft magnetic strip, 3D-printed air rudder, elastic electronic sensing devices and intelligent robots.

In the fields of carrier equipment, information display, energy and power, and life health, there is a significant and growing demand for the development and application of new materials, said Wang Liping, head of the NIMTE.

"The transformation of sci-tech achievements is an important bridge connecting research and production, as well as a core step to empower industrial innovation by technical innovation," said Zhou Yuxian, chairman of the CNBM.