On January 4, China's first thousand-ton-level natural gas-to-carbon nanotube production line, designed and constructed by China Petroleum Engineering & Construction Corporation (CPECC), was successfully put into operation. This production line was jointly developed through collaborative efforts by three entities: China Petroleum Engineering & Construction Corporation, Natural Gas Sales Company, and Jidong Oilfield Company. It boasts five major advantages: large-scale production, intelligent operation, low energy consumption, zero emissions, and low cost. The designed production capacity is 1,000 tons of carbon nanotubes and over 300 tons of hydrogen annually.

Since the project's launch in 2022, the research and development team led by CPECC Southwest Company has spent two and a half years successfully overcoming technical bottlenecks such as the industrial-scale preparation of highly active catalysts, the design of large-scale reactors, and full-process resource recovery. They have developed a complete set of technologies for "natural gas cracking to produce carbon nanotubes with hydrogen as a by-product."

To date, the project has resulted in the creation of two process packages, five core technologies, and one enterprise standard. Six patents have been filed, and the first thousand-ton-level green and intelligent carbon nanotube production line has been established. This provides a new pathway for the high-value utilization of natural gas and the development of the carbon-based new materials industry.

Carbon nanomaterials, with their high strength, high toughness, and excellent electrical, thermal, and optical properties, hold broad prospects in cutting-edge fields such as materials science and nanotechnology. The completion of this production line not only overcomes the limitations of traditional carbon nanotubes, such as high cost and small production scale, but also achieves a dual upgrade by enabling natural gas to produce both carbon nanotubes and hydrogen as a by-product, effectively "one gas, two uses." This transformation elevates natural gas from a simple fuel to a dual-purpose "raw material + energy source."