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Fine chemical industry is a strategic focus of the development of the chemical industry in the world today, and also a key area and important direction for the high-quality development of China's petrochemical industry during the 14th Five Year Plan period. It has the characteristics of high technology intensity, high product added value, and high profit margin.

Under the "dual carbon" goal, the green transformation of fine chemicals has become a global consensus and a strategic development direction for China. The role of biochemistry in the fine chemical industry will become more prominent, with main trends including the demand for higher production efficiency and greater productivity, adaptation to resource, ecological, and social development trends, and innovative production technologies for high-end fine chemicals.

Our reporter He Xiangren

Chuanwei Chemical Industry West Zone. Photo by Chen Lin

The 23rd National Conference on Fine Chemical Industry (Binhai) will be held on November 24-25, 2023. At the meeting, Luo Yamin, Vice Chairman of the National Fine Chemical Raw Materials and Intermediates Industry Cooperation Group, pointed out that after years of development, China's fine chemical industry has a prominent position and advantages in the global chemical industry pattern, and has gradually entered a stage of green development and transformation and upgrading. The annual output value of the domestic fine chemical industry is between 4 trillion and 5 trillion yuan, forming a relatively complete industrial system with a wide range of product categories.

The average annual growth rate of China's fine chemical market in the next 5 years is about 6%

Fine chemical engineering is the abbreviation for fine chemical engineering or fine chemical industry in the industrial field, specifically referring to the design, innovation, research and development, manufacturing, and application of fine chemicals that have comprehensive requirements for functionality and performance. It is also one of the most dynamic emerging fields in today's chemical industry.

Professor Zou Shuping from Zhejiang University of Technology introduced at the forum that fine chemicals have the characteristics of multiple varieties, high technological content, high product added value, and wide radiation range, including 11 categories such as pesticides, dyes, high-purity substances, catalysts and functional polymer materials, and active pharmaceutical ingredients. Among them, the proportion of active pharmaceutical ingredients and their intermediates, pesticides and their intermediates exceeds 32%, which is related to major issues such as environment, health and safety.

Luo Yamin stated that the global fine chemical industry market will experience an average annual growth rate of 3% to 4% over the next five years, with an overall scale of 2.8 trillion US dollars by 2027. Among all consumption regions, the annual average growth rate of China's fine chemical market is the fastest, about 6%. In the next five years, the global battery chemicals, electronic chemicals, pharmaceuticals, nutritional ingredients, adhesives and sealants, essence and fragrances will show growth rates higher than the industry average.

According to the "Research Report on the Prospects and Investment Opportunities of China's Fine Chemical Market" released by CICC Puhua Industry Research Institute, it is expected that the size of China's fine chemical market will reach 11 trillion yuan by 2027. At the same time, the rate of fine chemical industry in China (the proportion of fine chemical output value to total chemical output value) is also increasing year by year, from 36.5% in 2016 to 41.2% in 2021, and is planned to increase to 55% by 2025. She Yuanbin, academician of the European Academy of Humanities and Natural Sciences and dean of the Zhejiang Emergency Management Institute, pointed out that China has established more than 30 new field fine chemical technology centers, as well as 5000 new field fine chemical production enterprises, producing tens of thousands of types of products with an annual production capacity of over 2000 tons.

In the transformation period of China's chemical industry, the fine chemical industry will face huge upgrading opportunities: the rapid changes in downstream market demand drive the continuous progress of technology and products in the fine chemical industry, while the "dual carbon" goal and digital trend are also changing the essence of the fine chemical industry.

Using biomanufacturing technology to promote the development of fine chemical industry

Regarding the future development trend of China's fine chemical industry, She Yuanbin believes that as an important component of the chemical industry, the proportion (fine chemical rate) of fine chemical industry reflects the level of development of a country's chemical industry, providing abundant material resources for social progress and development. It is currently one of the indispensable and important industries in human society.

Zou Shuping pointed out that with the further improvement of environmental and industry standards in advanced industries, the problems of traditional chemical manufacturing are becoming increasingly prominent: high raw material consumption in the manufacturing process, large emissions of "three wastes", serious environmental pollution, and the production of 1 kilogram of fine chemicals by chemical methods produces an average of 5-50 kilograms of by-products; The synthetic pathway has lengthy reaction steps and low yield; The product impurities and quality control level are poor. Under the "dual carbon" goal, the green transformation of fine chemicals has become a global consensus and a strategic development direction for China. The use of biomanufacturing technology can promote the development of the fine chemical industry. The advantages of biomanufacturing technology perfectly match the requirements of fine chemicals for processes, pathways, and quality, which helps to achieve product quality improvement and carbon reduction in large-scale production processes. With biotechnology as the core, utilizing biological tissues or organisms for material processing, and integrating theories and methods of engineering, chemistry, physics, etc., low-carbon and green production of fine chemicals can achieve a 15% -80% reduction in industrial energy consumption, a 35% -75% reduction in raw material consumption, a 50% -90% reduction in air pollution, a 33% -80% reduction in water pollution, and a 9% -90% reduction in production costs.

Yao Xianping, academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and president of the Hangzhou Institute of Chemical Industry, stated that biobased materials are effective carriers for collecting, fixing, and efficiently utilizing carbon, with a global annual growth rate of 27%. Every year, the global biomass energy is 148 billion to 180 billion tons, with only 3% being utilized. By 2030, bio based products in the United States will replace 25% of organic chemicals and 20% of petroleum raw materials, and about 85% of plastics can be replaced by bio based plastics.

Development Trend of Fine Chemical Industry

Fine chemical industry is a high value-added and high-tech industrial field. By developing fine chemical industry, it can enhance national industrial competitiveness, optimize resource utilization, promote economic structure upgrading, enhance scientific and technological innovation capabilities, and expand foreign trade.

Strengthening technological innovation, emphasizing and optimizing the structure of fine chemical products, and focusing on developing high-performance, specialized, composite, and green products are important directions for the development of fine chemical industry.

1. The country attaches great importance to the development of fine chemicals in the field of people's life and health - functional dyes

Functional dyes used for disease diagnosis, early screening of cancer, gene sequencing, fluorescence surgical navigation, and imaging in the field of life and health will become the development direction of the new generation of functional dyes, providing powerful tools for humans to conquer diseases such as cancer. More importantly, the role of dyes has evolved from traditional textile printing and dyeing to high-end specialized chemicals that are indispensable in emerging industries such as photosensitizers, photoresists, fluorescent probes, and optical display materials. They are applied in related fields such as ecological textile dyeing, biological labeling, integrated disease diagnosis and treatment, and electronic information.

Surfactants have a wide and important range of applications in the fields of microelectronics and information technology

Surfactants can effectively reduce material damage and contamination in the slicing, grinding, polishing, photolithography, and cleaning processes of silicon materials during semiconductor integrated circuit manufacturing; It is also an essential component in various information and photosensitive materials such as printing, copying, and developing. There is a significant gap between China and foreign countries in the high-tech field of surfactants, such as high-end additives in the materials industry, ultra-low temperature cleaning agents and antifreeze for national defense, chip cleaning agents and etchants in the semiconductor photovoltaic industry, and drug carriers in the life field. 90% of high-end surfactants rely on imports, and there is an urgent need to carry out innovative independent research and development.

3. Creation technology and application of green pesticides

Further strengthen pesticide innovation strategies based on target orientation, natural product orientation, and intermediate derivatization to achieve original innovation. Build a biological activity screening platform, promote the evaluation and development system of new compounds through sharing, gather the efforts of scientific research, enterprises, and the government, and achieve China's leap from a pesticide powerhouse to a pesticide powerhouse.

4. Energy containing chemicals and high-energy desensitization will be the main development goals

Nitrogen rich and all nitrogen hybrid compounds have higher energy, but how to synthesize them in bulk is a major challenge; Azoles, furazanes, energetic ion salts, etc. have both high energy and excellent safety performance, and have broad prospects. Propellants and high-energy fuels are the main power sources for the aerospace industry, and high-energy green is the main development direction. Fuels and propellants with higher energy and density can further increase the payload and extend the range of aircraft; Safer and more environmentally friendly energetic compounds are gradually replacing high-risk propellants and fuels; There is a trend of cross fusion between solid and liquid propellants and fuels, which has become a new way to enhance propulsion energy.

5. The digital and network era endows photosensitive imaging with new vitality and development space

The core of digital imaging is networked digital images or digital content. China has been continuously making efforts in the field of digital mobile terminals such as smartphones and tablets, and has made significant progress and breakthroughs. However, how to shift from simple Chinese manufacturing to Chinese design and manufacturing, such as focusing on the "bottleneck" technical problems in emerging research fields such as high-end electronic information and chemical manufacturing, mastering core key technologies, and expanding coverage areas is still a difficult and long road.

In the future, through the deep integration of molecular design, material synthesis, separation and purification, application and manufacturing, China will continuously break through the bottleneck technology in the field of electronic information chemicals.