The Institute of Chemical Engineering has been awarded the highest national-level honor in China’s engineering surveying and design industry for 2025.

On November 24, the China Exploration and Design Association announced the winners of the 2025 National Outstanding Engineering Exploration and Design Awards. The chemical engineering institute’s project, “High-Resolution Photosensitive Dry Film Project for Circuit Boards by Hunan Wujiang High-Tech Materials Co., Ltd.,” was honored with the First Prize in the “Petroleum and Chemical Industry Engineering Design” category—the highest national award in China’s engineering exploration and design industry. This achievement represents a high-quality outcome of the chemical engineering institute’s ongoing commitment to the development philosophy of “professionalism, focus, innovation, efficiency, quality, and excellence,” and underscores the institute’s strong technical capabilities in the field of advanced materials engineering design.

The National Award for Outstanding Engineering Survey and Design is the highest national honor, aimed at promoting technological advancement in the engineering survey and design industry. This award covers multiple fields, including outstanding engineering surveys and outstanding engineering designs. It features a broad scope of evaluation, high technical standards, and strong representativeness. The criteria for selection also take into account the innovativeness, economic benefits, and social benefits achieved during project implementation. Only nine projects won the First Prize in the “Petroleum and Chemical Industry Engineering Design” category of the 2025 National Outstanding Engineering Survey and Design Awards. This project has successively won the First Prize for Outstanding Engineering Consulting Achievements in Hunan Province for 2020 and the First Prize for Outstanding Engineering Survey and Design Industrial Projects in Hunan Province for 2023. It serves as a model example among the many outstanding projects and high-quality engineering works produced by the Institute of Chemical Engineering.

The high-resolution photosensitive dry film used for printed circuit boards is a photosensitive thin film that serves as an essential consumable material in the fabrication of printed circuit boards (PCBs). It is widely employed in the microelectronics industry and the PCB manufacturing sector, serving numerous manufacturers across various fields—including electronics, information technology, telecommunications, medical devices, aerospace, and more. Globally, only a handful of countries have fully mastered this technology. Developed nations such as the United States and Japan have long maintained a monopoly on photosensitive dry film technology. For many years, China has been highly dependent on DuPont and Toshiba’s photosensitive dry film products. This project has successfully broken through the foreign monopoly on advanced dry film production technology, making it of great practical significance for the development of China’s photoresist materials industry.

The high-resolution photosensitive dry film project for printed circuit boards of Hunan Wujiang High-Tech Materials Co., Ltd. has a planned production capacity of 297.6 million square meters of high-resolution photosensitive dry film per year. The project is equipped with control systems such as DCS, SIS, and GDS, features an MES system, and incorporates BIM and 3D modeling. Upon completion, the project will become the largest photosensitive dry film production base in China, with all performance indicators reaching domestically leading and internationally advanced levels: (1) It is one of the 35 key national projects receiving priority support for “bottleneck” technologies, and it has achieved large-scale domestic production of dry films for the first time. (2) It has replaced over 40% of imported products, and automation has reduced labor costs by 40% and energy consumption by 18%. (3) It has become a major supplier in both the domestic and international PCB dry film markets, providing products and services to more than 80% of China’s publicly listed PCB companies as well as numerous global top-ten PCB manufacturers. (4) The RTO system achieves VOCs emission reductions of over 98%, and the wastewater recycling rate reaches 80%; the project has also been certified as a provincial-level green factory. Overall, the project’s technological level and comprehensive benefits are among the best in the domestic industry at the same time period, making it a benchmark project for photosensitive dry films used in printed circuit boards in China.

During the project design phase, the technical team from the Institute of Chemical Engineering adhered to the following principles: "safety design as the top priority, green design as the core philosophy, innovative design as the key competitive edge, and intelligent design as the direction for future development." Guided by technology, quality, schedule, and comprehensive services, the team worked closely with the project investors and meticulously crafted the design, laying a solid foundation for the construction of a high-quality project. In this project’s design, we fully embraced the concept of innovation. Through thorough research and repeated verification of various design options, we successfully addressed numerous challenging issues—including scale-up design, equipment layout, architecture, structural engineering, HVAC, and fire protection—and arrived at an economically viable design solution that not only meets production needs and complies with relevant national standards and regulations but also minimizes investment and shortens the construction period.

As a Class-A design institute in the chemical, petrochemical, and pharmaceutical industries, a specialized, sophisticated, and innovative enterprise at the provincial level, and a joint graduate training base for industry-education integration at the provincial level, the Institute of Chemical Engineering has been deeply engaged in the fields of chemicals, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, construction, and municipal engineering for over six decades. Its qualifications and credentials rank among the leading ones within both national and provincial-level institutes and departments, boasting strong and time-honored technical expertise and a profound technological foundation. Its technologies are notably “specialized, sophisticated, and innovative,” distinctly characterized and endowed with clear advantages. The Institute holds three key technology innovation platforms: the “Provincial Enterprise Technology Center” designated by the Hunan Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology, the “Municipal Electrochemical Energy Storage Materials Technology Innovation Center” established by the Changsha Municipal Science and Technology Bureau, and the “Municipal Enterprise Technology Center” accredited by the Changsha Municipal Development and Reform Commission. We are confident that, under the guidance of the grand 865 strategy of China Energy Engineering Group Hunan Institute, the Institute of Chemical Engineering will continue to deepen its expertise in the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors, deliver even more innovative and high-quality projects, and wholeheartedly write a new chapter for the Institute—a chapter marked by industry leadership and first-class status within China!