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Zhenjiang has successfully developed a production facility capable of manufacturing thousands of tons of carbon nanotubes per year using a single reactor!

2025-04-19View Original

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Winna Materials Technology (Zhenjiang) Co., Ltd. has successfully commissioned a production facility capable of manufacturing thousands of tons of carbon nanotubes per year using a single reactor. Thanks to their excellent physical and chemical properties, carbon nanotubes have begun to play an important role in the field of new materials; they are being gradually put into industrial use and are also widely applied in the lithium battery industry, attracting increasing attention from the industrial sector. In China, carbon nanotubes are used in power batteries as conductive agents. With the rapid growth of the power battery industry, the market for these carbon nanotubes has reached several billion yuan per year. Many domestic and international companies as well as listed firms have entered this field of carbon nanotube conductive agents, such as Tiannan Technology, Dow Chemical, and Cabot Corporation from the United States. As new technologies such as high-nickel cathodes, silicon-based anodes, and solid-state batteries are adopted on a larger scale, the use of carbon nanotubes is set to experience explosive growth; merely in the field of lithium batteries, this will create a market worth tens of billions of dollars per year. In addition to their excellent electrical conductivity, carbon nanotubes also possess superior mechanical and thermal properties, offering a vast potential market for development. Mr. Richard E. Smalley, the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate and discoverer of fullerenes, once said, “Carbon nanotubes are the strongest, stiffest, and hardest molecules that can be created, and they are also the best molecular conductors for heat and electricity.” It may sound like yet another optimistic prediction and wish from scientists, but this was precisely the original intention behind Mr. Zhao Setao, the founder of Winna Materials Technology (Zhenjiang) Co., Ltd., in entering the carbon nanotube industry – and it remains the goal for its industrialization. The use of conductive agents in lithium batteries is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the industrialization of carbon nanotubes; it represents the first step for capital and traditional chemical and new material companies to become aware of carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes will find broader applications in touch screens, transistors, biomedicine, solar photovoltaic cells, tires, fuel cells, drug delivery, hydrogen storage, polymer materials, capacitors, composite materials, and more. They will continue to open up markets worth tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars, and have the potential to become an industry worth trillions of dollars. To utilize the huge market for carbon nanotubes, a large production capacity for such nanotubes is required; only a sustainable supply of carbon nanotubes that are both low-cost and high-quality can unlock the vast potential downstream markets. The ton-scale production of carbon nanotubes in the early days was achieved using fixed-bed/moving-bed equipment. In horizontally placed tubular furnaces, sophisticated mechanisms were employed to enable the continuous feeding of catalysts and hydrocarbon feedstocks as well as the continuous removal of carbon nanotube products, allowing first-generation carbon nanotube factories equipped with a single such unit to produce quantities ranging from several tons to dozens of tons per year. To date, for certain special types of carbon nanotubes, or those produced using special materials as carbon sources, first-generation carbon nanotube factories that use fixed-bed/moving-bed systems still hold a certain market share. To address the production of carbon nanotubes on a larger scale, second-generation carbon nanotube factories that use fluidized bed reactors have solved the problem of achieving an annual production capacity of 100 to 300 tons per reactor. At present, the large-scale production of carbon nanotubes in China mainly relies on fluidized bed reactors. With the emergence of requirements for larger-scale production, fluidized bed reactors have the following drawback: 1. They cannot be scaled up proportionally ; 2. Prone to carbon buildup and coking, which can block the reactor ; 3. Persistent problems such as difficulty in shutting down the furnace for reactor cleaning and long processing times severely restrict the increase in the production capacity of each fluidized bed reactor. Currently, the inner diameters of fluidized bed reactors in this industry are mainly 500mm, 600mm, and 800mm; it is very difficult to increase them further. In light of this, in response to the call to contribute to the country through materials and to take technological innovation as its responsibility, Winna Materials Technology (Zhenjiang) Co., Ltd., a company located in the Danyang High-Tech Innovation Park, continues to make efforts in the field of large-scale production of carbon nanotubes. The Danyang High-Tech Innovation Park is located in Danyang City, Jiangsu Province. Serving as a \"cradle\" for fostering technological innovation, it acts as a hub for the development and growth of innovative industrial clusters. It bears the important mission of cultivating new forms of productivity, while also providing one-stop, high-quality services to those engaged in innovation and entrepreneurship. Overcoming numerous difficulties and working with determination and perseverance, Winna Materials Company managed to complete two years of intensive research and development in a short period of time. It succeeded in developing large-scale production methods for the third generation of carbon nanotubes. Through collaboration among industry, academia, and research institutions, these technologies were transferred to Juyuan New Materials Technology Company in Zunyi City, Guizhou Province, where a large-scale factory for the production of third-generation carbon nanotubes was established. Covering an area of 105.8 mu, the factory has a total investment of 680 million yuan; it has emerged as a rising star in China’s chemical new materials industry, quietly taking root in Guizhou Province. Through this industry-research collaboration, Winna Materials Company has also achieved a win-win situation with Zunyi Juyuan New Materials Technology Co., Ltd., transforming technology into actual production lines and advanced manufacturing capabilities, and putting those technological achievements into practice on the land of the motherland. In the third-generation carbon nanotube factory, a single reactor is capable of producing 1,000 tons of carbon nanotube powder per year; the production capacity of one such reactor is 3 to 10 times that of a single fluidized bed reactor in the second-generation factories. For example, to build a new factory capable of producing 6,000 tons of carbon nanotube powder per year, 30 reactors were originally required; however, with Winna Materials Company’s new technology, only 6 reactors are needed, which significantly reduces the investment cost. The enlargement of individual reactors brings significant economies of scale, which greatly reduces the production cost of carbon nanotubes and increases the profit margin of factories. The enlargement of individual reactors also reduces the complexity of managing production lines and the number of managers, thereby saving on a factory’s labor costs. The enlargement of individual reactors also greatly contributes to the stability of carbon nanube products; in industry terms, this means better product consistency. In addition, Winna Materials’ reactors, capable of producing thousands of tons of carbon nanotubes per year per unit, exhibit wide adaptability to raw materials; the production materials can be various common bulk substances such as ethane, ethylene, propylene, propane, butane, and butylene. High-yield catalysts tailored for various raw materials. By consulting domestic and international materials and reports, Winna Materials Company’s reactor, capable of producing carbon nanotubes at a rate of thousands of tons per year per unit, represents the first time in both domestic and international contexts that a reactor of such large scale has been successfully put into operation. This is not a reactor that remains only on paper or in designs; it is an actual production facility that has undergone months of continuous operation tests in a factory, and it is also the largest single carbon nanotube reactor in the world. A reactor capable of producing thousands of tons of carbon nanotubes per year has overcome the theoretical and technical limitations of existing second-generation factory fluidized-bed reactors, ushering in a new era for the large-scale production of carbon nanotubes. The third-generation carbon nanotube factory combines the advantages of fixed-bed and fluidized-bed equipment, overcomes their respective inherent defects, thereby enabling long-term continuous operation and the enlargement of the equipment. In addition, the third-generation large-scale carbon nanotube factory production lines optimize catalysts and processes to enable the production of carbon nanotubes in various specifications using these large-scale equipment. The bulk density of the product is 0.05–0.15 g/ml; it is easy to disperse. The catalyst ratio can be adjusted within the range of 20–50 times. Depending on the intended application, general-purpose carbon nanotubes, decorated carbon nanotubes, thin-walled carbon nanotubes, and others can be produced. The production process is simple, efficient, and environmentally friendly; it overcomes the bottlenecks and cost issues associated with the large-scale production of high-quality carbon nanotubes, thereby breaking through the challenges of ultra-large-scale carbon nanotube production first. As is well known, new materials have excellent performance, but the biggest obstacle to their widespread adoption is usually their high cost. The stable annual production of thousands of tons of carbon nanotubes in a single reactor further significantly reduces the production costs of carbon nanotubes, as well as the construction costs of large-scale carbon nanotube factories. A significant reduction in the production costs of carbon nanotubes, in turn, will open the door to new applications. With the continuous development of the domestic carbon nanotube industry over more than 20 years, it has managed to overcome its infancy through market competition; ongoing efforts have led to breakthroughs in various application areas, alongside a continuous decline in the prices of carbon nanotubes. The carbon nanotube industry is bound to reach a market scale of trillions in the next decade.

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