On April 30, 2021, the Shanxi Provincial Government issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for New Equipment Development in Shanxi Province," outlining new development goals: by 2025, the Shanxi equipment manufacturing industry is expected to achieve a revenue of 450 billion yuan, with an annual growth rate of 12%. The degree of industrial concentration will be significantly improved, the scale and efficiency of new equipment will increase substantially, innovation capabilities will be further enhanced, and Shanxi will become a key pillar of the modern equipment manufacturing industry in China.

For many years, Shanxi has been overly dependent on the energy industry and faces urgent and challenging tasks in economic upgrading, transformation, and low-carbon development. With the transformation of old and new driving forces, the province is actively introducing and cultivating high-end equipment, seeking new industrial growth points in green new equipment manufacturing, which is guiding its industrial structural adjustment. Taking advantage of this momentum to promote transformation, the development of green new equipment is the key foundation for implementing the "six new" initiatives and is an important support for the province’s high-quality transformation and development.

"Green" Buildings, Building a Low-Carbon Life

In the commands of CNC machine tools, steel bars and steel plates are transformed into building components such as floor slabs, steel beams, steel columns, and U-shaped pipe fittings. Walking into the intelligent manufacturing workshop at the Xiahe Industrial Park for modernized construction in Shanxi, the speed of prefabricated construction is impressive. In no time, a steel structure pedestrian bridge begins to take shape.

Unlike traditional construction methods, prefabricated buildings have obvious advantages in reducing carbon emissions, saving energy and materials, shortening construction periods, and improving building quality. Lai Zhongyi, the chief engineer of the Shanxi Architectural Design and Research Institute Co., Ltd., said that the prefabricated building production process is precisely controlled to eliminate material waste, and the assembly process is clean and environmentally friendly, reducing construction waste. Its components can also be reused, achieving resource regeneration.

With fast construction speeds and high social benefits, prefabricated buildings have become an important direction for the transformation and upgrading of Shanxi's construction industry. In recent years, to promote intelligent construction and build low-carbon cities, Shanxi has been pushing for the standardized development of prefabricated buildings, issuing guidelines such as the "Shanxi Prefabricated Building Design Guidelines" and the "Prefabricated Building Industrial Base Management Measures," continually promoting the implementation of prefabricated building projects and advancing the construction of prefabricated building industrial bases.

Filling the gaps and deeply integrating, the prefabricated technology standard system is gradually improving, research results are continuously being converted, the industrial chain is constantly extending, and key enterprises and talents are growing. Eighteen provincial-level prefabricated building industrial bases have been put into operation, achieving nearly full coverage of the transportation radius within 100 kilometers and full integration of the entire industrial chain and process. From high-rise buildings to rural fields, from municipal facilities to daily life, there is a vast stage for the application of prefabricated products.

Cheng Junhu, the director of the park operation and management department at Shanxi Construction Investment Group, introduced that the group’s products cover areas such as construction, municipal, highway, railway, and electricity. Among them, PC components, PS components, aerated concrete products, high-precision aluminum formwork, high-efficiency energy-saving doors and windows, and prefabricated decoration parts have been widely applied in the construction of prefabricated high-rise residential buildings, office buildings, industrial plants, and beautiful rural areas in Shanxi. The "Prefabricated + Digital Intelligence" model has also become a new economic growth point for the enterprise.

"Green" Materials, Weaving the Industrial Blueprint

With a total investment of more than 60 billion yuan, once completed and put into production, the annual output value is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan... The Shanxi Synthetic Biology Industry Ecological Park project under construction is a benchmark project for Shanxi's transformation and development, and is the largest synthetic biology industry ecological park in the world. Since construction started last October, builders have overcome unfavorable conditions such as the pandemic, ensuring rapid project progress. Public supporting projects like the combined heat and power plant, sewage treatment plant, and water treatment plant have overall progress exceeding 50%. The acceleration behind this is a sense of urgency, racing against time.

Through biological gene editing, new biological entities, new materials, and even new energy can be obtained—this is the technology of biosynthesis.

From corn to colorful scarves, biological synthesis technology, combined with the internet, sparks endless possibilities in modern life. As a core enterprise in the Shanxi Synthetic Biology Industry Ecological Park, Shanghai Kasai Biotechnology Co., Ltd. has partnered with the Shanxi Comprehensive Reform Demonstration Zone to establish the Synthetic Biology Industry Research Institute, aiming to continuously promote the iterative upgrade of key technologies and core technologies, providing strong support for enhancing Shanxi's regional innovation capacity and core competitiveness.

Leading the way, cultivating clusters. With supporting infrastructure and large loan guarantees, Shanxi is building a "low-cost price ecological system" for production factors and a "zero-environmental protection" guarantee project to support the operation and implementation of projects. Full-chain preparation and incubation support provide a safeguard for upstream and downstream enterprises and the biological-based new materials industry.

Shanxi has natural advantages for developing carbon-based new materials. Yangquan City and Jincheng City have rich reserves of anthracite coal, with proven reserves of 47 billion tons, accounting for about 39.6% of the country's total anthracite coal reserves, making it the preferred raw material for producing new carbon materials. Turning resource endowments into development advantages, and actively promoting the transformation of coal resources into carbon-based new materials, is an inevitable starting point for Shanxi’s new material industry development. Going forward, Shanxi will develop carbon-based new materials in four areas: carbon-based synthetic new materials, high-end carbon materials, new coal coking carbon materials, and new energy storage materials.

"Green" Factories, Upgrading Traditional Industries

"Adjusting coal powder particle size, discharging coal powder, system program pre-commissioning..." In the control room for chemical new materials at Huayang New Materials Technology Group Co., Ltd., more than 20 engineers, technicians, and several American experts are making the final preparations before ignition and coal injection for the R-GAS gasifier test.

"The airflow bed mechanism of this R-GAS gasifier is completely different from other domestic coal chemical processes and has independent innovation," said Bai Jing, deputy manager of the chemical new materials ammonia synthesis division and R-GAS workshop director. The R-GAS gasification technology is a compact coal powder pressurized gasification technology, which can fundamentally solve the problem of directly gasifying high-ash, high-melting-point coal in Shanxi and even the whole country, playing an important role in the clean and efficient utilization of low-quality coal and improving resource efficiency.

By upgrading environmental protection standards, enterprises are being forced to eliminate outdated equipment and innovate traditional processes, thus improving green production levels.

"This is a fully enclosed shed we built as a pilot project in Changzhi, investing more than 30 million yuan. It is like putting a cover on the coke oven, which recovers all the waste heat from the coke oven gas, and the chimney no longer emits white smoke. The traditional coal and coke enterprises' 'unorganized emission' of exhaust gases has been completely changed to 'organized emission,' achieving green production," said Yin Junhu, general manager of Shanxi Xiangyuan New Coal Chemical Co., Ltd. The "four major vehicles" for coal charging, coke pushing, coke blocking, and coke extinguishing use advanced German technology to achieve "manned monitoring, unmanned operation" intelligent production.

"For Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Group, the 'New Equipment Plan' has pointed the way forward for our development," said Han Xiaozhong, the deputy general manager of Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Group Co., Ltd. "During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Group will deeply apply new technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data, and blockchain to empower traditional equipment in coal machinery, metallurgy, mining, and other industries as well as new equipment in rail transportation, new energy, and construction machinery, accelerating the company’s digital and intelligent transformation and upgrading."