The reporter recently learned from relevant sources that in the “12th Five-Year Plan†development strategy of emerging strategic industries, the specific requirements for the new materials industry are: By 2015, the self-sufficiency rate of key new materials will increase to 70%. The industry believes that from the perspective of upstream resources reserves, technology reserves, and downstream demand space, rare earth functional materials all have greater advantages, and they are expected to become the top priority for the development of new material industries in the future.
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Rare earth functional materials will be the focus of development
According to an authoritative source, in the “12th Five-Year†development strategy of emerging strategic industries, the expression of the new materials industry is: “By 2015, we will break through a number of key common technologies that are urgently required by the national construction and lead the future development. The self-sufficiency of key new materials has increased to 70%."
At present, because the scale of the new material industry is too small, its industrial statistics system has not yet been established. There is no authoritative data on the existing self-sufficiency rate of the new material industry.
According to Xu Luping, Director of Materials Division of the High-Tech Development and Industrialization Division of the Ministry of Science and Technology, there has been no strict definition between the original materials and new materials for a long time. Usually, we call steel, non-ferrous metals, petrochemicals, textiles, light industry, and building materials as basic raw materials. Among them, the optimistic view is that new materials account for 30%, and the conservative version accounts for 8%.
However, the industry’s understanding of “key new materials†is still relatively consistent. Professor Tang Jianmao, director of the consulting department of the China Material Research Society, pointed out that “the next round of scientific and technological revolution will be green energy, including energy conservation, environmental protection and new energy, and the foundation for the rise of these industries will be new materials.â€
This means that rare earth functional materials that serve the energy conservation, environmental protection and new energy industries will be the focus of development.
People involved in Baotou Steel Rare-Earth think that the development of rare earth functional materials should be put first. "The development of the seven strategic emerging industries are difficult to leave the rare earth, and its importance is self-evident."
“Rare-earth functional materials are an important field for the development of science and technology in China, and occupy the world's high-tech commanding heights. As the most important driving force for pulling the entire rare earth industry, the importance of rare earth functional materials has reached a consensus in the international community.†Baotou Steel Rare Earth Related Person said .
Li Weiya, deputy director of the China Iron and Steel Technology Research Group's Functioning Institute, pointed out that "China's rare earth industry is not justified. After all, resources are in our hands."
According to the data obtained by the reporter from the Chinese Society of Rare Earths, as of the end of 2000, the country's proven rare earth resources (REO) exceeded 100 million tons, and the forecasted resource prospects were greater than 210 million tons. In addition to the major resource potential of the known major metallogenic areas, rare earth deposits related to alkaline granites in eastern Inner Mongolia, rare earth deposits related to carbonate rocks in Hubei and Xinjiang, and Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guizhou The same types of gold-bearing rare-earth phosphorite deposits have great resource potential.
Will allocate huge funds to support rare earth applications
Authoritative sources revealed that the “12th Five-Year†development plan for the new material industry clearly stated that in the next five years, “high-efficiency rare earth permanent magnets, catalysis, hydrogen storage and other high-performance rare earth functional materials and rare earth resource high-efficiency comprehensive utilization technologies will be vigorously developed.†In the coming five years, the Ministry of Science and Technology will allocate a total of RMB 350 million in support funds to focus on supporting the R&D of rare earth materials in the above four areas.
At present, in the four major application areas, rare earth permanent magnets are the largest and most potential part.
According to a researcher at Datong Securities, compared with traditional motors, rare earth permanent magnet ironless motors are characterized by high efficiency, energy saving, light weight, small size, good controllability, high reliability, etc. They can be widely used in wind power generation and electric vehicles. , industrial motors, home motors and other fields.
In terms of industrial energy-saving motors, the power consumption of fans, pumps, and compressors in China's key energy-consuming industries accounts for about 40% of the total, and the annual electricity consumption exceeds 500 billion kwh. According to conservative estimates, the efficiency of system operation using rare earth permanent magnet coreless motors to drive general-purpose equipment can be increased by 20% to 40%, and the potential for electricity saving is 100 billion to 200 billion kilowatt-hours.
At present, China's wind power generation equipment market is nearly 100 billion yuan. Among the various types of wind turbines currently equipped, permanent magnet wind turbines have become the first choice for wind turbines because of their high efficiency, small size, high reliability, and simple structure. The use of rare earth permanent magnets can increase the efficiency of generators to more than 85%. At the same time, the use of permanent magnet generators also enables the direct coupling of wind turbines and generators, eliminating the need for gearboxes, thereby increasing reliability, reducing system noise and reducing maintenance costs.
Datong Securities predicts that by 2015, China’s wind power is expected to achieve an installed capacity of 100 million kilowatts, which will be calculated based on 0.6-1.5 tons of neodymium-iron boron per 1MW class permanent-magnet wind turbine, and consumes 60,000-50,000 tons of neodymium-iron boron. This will provide a vast space for the future application of NdFeB permanent magnet materials.
In addition, energy-saving appliances are also important alternative applications for NdFeB in the future. Currently in Japan, Europe and the United States and other countries, about 98% of air conditioners are inverter air conditioners, but China is currently less used. Inverter air conditioners are bound to become the future development trend because of their characteristics of comfort, energy saving and so on. As China's home appliance market is huge, the development of variable frequency home appliances will open up a new application field for NdFeB permanent magnets.
Datong Securities predicts that under the development trend of low-carbon economy, with the continuous development of new application areas, the global NdFeB industry will maintain an annual growth rate of 15% in the next 5 years, while China's rare earth permanent magnet market is expected to maintain 20%. The above growth rate.
Compared with the permanent magnetic industry, hydrogen storage, luminescence, and catalysis in the other three major applications of rare earth functional materials seem to be somewhat flat. Ping An Securities researcher believes that the key technical bottleneck for hydrogen storage needs to be broken, while the LED (Light Emitting) (LED) and other fields are subject to overseas intellectual property and technical constraints.
The importance of permanent magnet materials is difficult to replace
In fact, with the development of a low-carbon economy, the rare earth permanent magnet industrial chain has shown a "king of style". At present, the rare earth and neodymium iron boron prices have reached a record high.
Since the beginning of this year, the price of rare earths has been rising all the way, with an increase of 2 times; the spot price of permanent magnet materials has soared from 100 yuan per kilogram to 700 yuan, an increase of up to 600%. However, in the recent period, as downstream demand has been overdrawn in the short term, rare earth prices have been phased back, and the investment confidence in the permanent magnet segment has also been greatly affected.
In this regard, CICC analyst Zhao Xiaoguang believes that the properties of the NdFeB industry are different from those of semiconductors and panels. The depreciation rate of NdFeB manufacturers accounts for 3%, while the depreciation of semiconductors and panels accounts for 20%. For ferro-boron manufacturers, profitability is far more important than capacity utilization. Therefore, the short-term fluctuations in the demand of downstream industries have little impact.
According to reports, in the high-end fields such as mobile phone vibration motors and miniature electroacoustic devices, the importance of permanent magnetic materials is difficult to replace. In fact, "even if the price of neodymium-iron boron increases by 100%, each mobile phone will only increase the cost by about one yuan, and it can be passed on through the price increase of the product."
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