Current Status of China's Electroplating Industry

Electroplating, an indispensable segment in contemporary industrial chains, finds extensive applications across various fields such as machinery, electronics, automobiles, aviation, and aerospace. It serves to decorate, protect, and enhance the functionality of industrial products, enabling them to meet diverse practical demands. In 1840, the Elkington brothers in England patented the process of silver cyaniding and established an electroplating factory, marking the inception of the electroplating industry [1]. Over the subsequent 170+ years, fueled by advancements in other industries and the relentless efforts of electroplating professionals, the electroplating industry has achieved remarkable progress in terms of technology, equipment, management, and functionality, increasingly becoming a vital force driving industrial progress and economic development. With the introduction of national industrial revitalization plans and the steady and rapid growth of the overall economy, China's electroplating industry has seized valuable strategic development opportunities and is now transitioning from being a major electroplating country to a powerful one. This article briefly reviews the current status of China's electroplating industry and focuses on its future development prospects.

1. Current Status of China's Electroplating Industry

1.1 Significant Position and Unique Role

Currently, China boasts over 15,000 electroplating enterprises, with those above the designated size generating an annual output value of RMB 100 billion and processing 1 billion square meters of materials [2]. In terms of scale, China has emerged as a major electroplating nation. Electroplating is not only a crucial processing link in traditional machinery industries but also an essential supporting segment for high-end equipment manufacturing and advanced information technology industries. The technological level and development of the electroplating industry directly determine the quality of other industrial sectors' development. Therefore, the electroplating industry holds a pivotal position in future development, with its irreplaceable characteristics conferring unique roles.

1.2 Wide Geographical Distribution and Low Scale Level

China's electroplating enterprises are distributed nationwide, covering almost all provinces and cities, but they are primarily concentrated in coastal regions such as East China and South China, as well as a few industrially developed inland areas. Overall, China's electroplating enterprises are small-scale and numerous, with most lacking comprehensive planning and being scattered. Except for a few cities with well-established electroplating parks or cities, most enterprises have rudimentary equipment, low-skilled personnel, significant environmental pollution, and low economic benefits per enterprise.

1.3 Extensive Industry Coverage, Diverse Product Types, and High Market Demand

As a supporting processing industry, the electroplating industry interacts with various sectors, primarily serving machinery, electronics, automobiles, aviation, aerospace, construction, and other decorative industries. The deposited layer obtained through electroplating, known as the coating, protects the substrate material from environmental corrosion, enhances its appearance, and adds aesthetic value. Based on their applications, electroplated coatings can be classified into protective coatings, protective-decorative coatings, and functional coatings, with the latter including wear-resistant, friction-reducing, conductive, and optical layers, suitable for diverse fields. With the advancement of national key projects like subways and aviation, as well as the rapid development of industrial sectors, the market demand for electroplating is increasing annually. Taking printed circuit boards (PCBs) as an example, the total output value of China's PCB industry grew from RMB 36 billion in 2001 to RMB 118.3 billion in 2008, marking a 228% increase in scale [3], indicative of robust market demand growth.

1.4 Low Industrial and Equipment Levels, Severe Environmental Pollution

The electroplating industry is one of the world's three major polluting industries, with its wastewater, exhaust gas, and sludge containing substantial amounts of heavy metal ions, acidic gases, and other toxic and harmful components. If not properly treated, these pollutants can severely damage the environment. Against the backdrop of building an environmentally friendly society and developing a green circular economy, the electroplating industry should seize this opportunity to promote cleaner production, strictly implement relevant regulations during the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" period, improve processes, upgrade equipment, and transform into an environmentally friendly industry to sustain long-term and rapid development.

The key factors determining the overall development of the electroplating industry include technology, equipment, and management. With the overall development of the manufacturing industry and increased international exchanges, China's electroplating industry has made certain progress in these three aspects. New eco-friendly technologies such as cyanide-free processes and trivalent chromium substitution for hexavalent chromium have been adopted by some enterprises, and advanced equipment like automated electroplating production lines has been deployed in large and medium-sized enterprises. The concept of scientific management has also gradually gained attention. However, due to the small scale and insufficient funds of most enterprises, China's electroplating industry still consumes a large amount of materials and water, causing severe environmental pollution. Compared to the international average, there is still a significant gap [4], highlighting the long road ahead for all electroplating professionals.

2. Major Future Development Directions of China's Electroplating Industry

Based on the current development status of China's electroplating industry, future growth will center on environmental protection in the following aspects:

2.1 Comprehensively Promoting Cleaner Production

As a chemicals-intensive industry, the electroplating industry generally faces issues of high material consumption and low efficiency, with its processing processes generating significant pollutants, primarily wastewater, exhaust gas, and waste residue. From the perspectives of environmental protection and industry development, it is imperative to upgrade the environmental management of the electroplating industry to achieve environmentally friendly and green electroplating.

Since the 1980s, industrial pollution control strategies in advanced countries like the United States, the Netherlands, and Germany have undergone significant changes, shifting from traditional end-of-pipe treatment to pollution prevention strategies. This transformation led to the creation of the new concept of "cleaner production," which focuses on pollution control throughout the production process. The essence of cleaner production lies in two aspects: adopting advanced technologies, processes, equipment, and management improvements, and emphasizing source prevention to fundamentally eliminate pollution and maximize resource utilization.

For the electroplating industry, implementing cleaner production is imperative, both as a path to pollution control and as a means of industrial upgrading. The core content of cleaner production in the electroplating industry is "source reduction" and "recycling" [1,5], which are both objectives and necessary measures for achieving cleaner production. "Source reduction" involves minimizing the generation of pollutants from the source through optimizing electroplating processes, improving processing equipment, and enhancing management quality. "Recycling" involves realizing resource utilization.

2.1.1 Emphasizing Source Reduction

Source reduction involves minimizing the generation of pollutants from the source, achievable through optimizing electroplating processes, improving processing equipment, and enhancing management quality. Reducing the discharge of the three wastes (wastewater, waste gas, and solid waste) is the first step in source reduction, which not only minimizes additional operational costs but also significantly reduces raw material consumption and increases enterprise profitability.

Taking the source reduction of electroplating wastewater as an example, it is essential to further reduce the carry-out of workpiece attachment fluid and the water consumption for workpiece cleaning, ensuring that wastewater does not reach the ground and strictly controlling fresh water usage. In terms of processes, new process methods such as spray cleaning, multi-stage parallel DC cleaning, heated stirring cleaning, countercurrent cleaning, and automatic control of electroplating fresh water conductivity should be selected appropriately for different scenarios. In terms of equipment, manual electroplating process lines should be gradually phased out, and integrated combinations between tanks and upstream and downstream processes should be realized. In terms of management, government departments and industry organizations should strengthen on-site supervision, and regions with conditions can implement a quota system for fresh water usage in electroplating enterprises, with one meter and one policy per enterprise, to promote energy conservation and emission reduction in a targeted manner.

2.1.2 Strengthening Resource Recycling

Although electroplating enterprises' emissions contain substantial environmental pollutants, they also contain abundant useful elements. For instance, electroplating sludge, an inevitable precipitate product during wastewater treatment in electroplating plants, can cause secondary pollution if not properly treated but can also extract a significant amount of useful metallic substances if handled appropriately. Therefore, enhancing the resource utilization of pollutants is a beneficial endeavor, albeit requiring extensive research and practice.

Taking the recycling of electroplating rinsing water as an example, rinsing is a crucial step in ensuring plating quality and maintaining process stability in electroplating, but it is also a major source of pollution. Effective ways to improve rinsing water utilization and save water include adopting automatic conductivity control and water recycling for electroplating rinsing water.

Against the backdrop of energy conservation, emission reduction, and a low-carbon economy, China's electroplating industry must strengthen resource recycling in the future, maximizing the benefits of limited resources. This is also an essential means for enterprises to improve their economic and social benefits. Through technological innovation, we can create a new, environmentally friendly future for electroplating.

2.1.3 Promotion of green and environmentally friendly processes

Due to the potential impact of promoting new environmentally friendly processes on product quality, and the mature use of existing processes, many enterprises lack enthusiasm for the research and promotion of environmentally friendly processes due to limitations in enterprise scale and cost and benefit considerations. This is also one of the main reasons for the low overall level and slow progress of China's electroplating industry. However, in the future development, if electroplating enterprises do not achieve transformation and upgrading, they will face the fate of being shut down and merged by relevant departments, which will also have a negative impact on the industry's development. Therefore, the rapid promotion of green and environmentally friendly processes is the top priority for the electroplating industry.

The pollution in the electroplating industry is mainly caused by heavy metal ions, especially hexavalent chromium, which is a serious source of pollution. Countries around the world have successively carried out work to replace hexavalent chromium. In recent years, a series of new processes such as low chromium plating, low chromium passivation, trivalent chromium plating, trivalent chromium passivation, phosphorus free pretreatment, and environmentally friendly plating have been actively promoted in some large and medium-sized electroplating enterprises, and have achieved good results. With the gradual promotion of clean production audit work in electroplating enterprises, in the future, all electroplating enterprises should promote these processes as much as possible.

Cyanide, as a ligand in electroplating solutions, is an important raw material in the electroplating industry. Due to its high toxicity, cyanide is also one of the main sources of pollution. The comprehensive promotion and use of cyanide free processes is the main means to solve these problems. With the continuous introduction of new electroplating additives or intermediates into the market, the quality of cyanide free processes can be effectively improved, making new progress in previously difficult cyanide free processes such as alkaline cyanide free copper plating. At present, technically mature cyanide free processes mainly include cyanide free zinc plating and cyanide free copper plating, and other cyanide free electroplating processes such as zinc copper alloy are also being developed. With the advancement of technology, mature cyanide free processes should be gradually promoted in batches in the future to replace traditional high pollution cyanide containing processes.

2.2 High end emerging demand continues to increase

Traditionally, the main application areas of electroplating have been concentrated in machinery and light industry. With the advancement of electroplating technology and the increasing demand in other industries, in recent years, electroplating has gradually expanded to industries such as electronics, microelectromechanical systems, and steel, and this trend is becoming increasingly evident. These emerging demands have higher requirements for electroplating and can better promote the development of the electroplating industry towards intensification and scale, promoting continuous technological progress in the electroplating industry.

The application of electroplating in the field of integrated circuits (ICs) is becoming increasingly widespread. With the expansion of IC scale, the requirements for copper interconnects are becoming increasingly high. It is the introduction of the dual Damascus process based on electroplating technology that has solved the problem of copper interconnects and promoted the development of IC technology today. Currently, with the increasing demand for 3D chips, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and the Internet of Things, the electroplating industry will play a more prominent role in these new high-end fields in the future.

2.3 New progress has been made in the construction of electroplating parks

At present, there are problems in China's electroplating industry such as scattered factory sites and small scale, which have serious adverse effects on environmental protection work. Concentrating the operation of electroplating enterprises, turning blockages into sparse ones, developing them in a centralized manner, and building electroplating parks or cities are effective methods to solve this problem, which have been successfully practiced in some cities [7]. However, there are still problems in the construction of many electroplating parks, such as unscientific planning, insufficient attention to the treatment of waste gas and waste residue, and inadequate management systems in the parks.

In the future, when constructing or renovating electroplating parks, top-level design should be strengthened, taking into account the situation of the settled enterprises and related supporting facilities. At the same time, in the management of the park, we should always adhere to the principle of scientific development, strictly follow the requirements of clean production and circular economy, and maximize the efficiency of the electroplating park.

2.4 Further improvement of enterprise management level

The level of enterprise management is a decisive factor in implementing various strategies of the enterprise. Without advanced management concepts and effective management methods, any policy and technological improvements will be greatly discounted. The concept of enterprise management was first born in American companies, and its importance was also recognized. After being studied and improved by famous management scholars such as Simon and Drucker, the importance of enterprise management has been recognized by the world.

At present, the scale of electroplating enterprises in China is generally small, and their management awareness and level are relatively backward, which does not match the rapid development trend required by the electroplating industry itself. The rapid development of the electroplating industry requires not only improvements in processes and equipment, but also more efforts in enterprise management.

In response to the current problems, the management of electroplating enterprises in China should focus on improving the following aspects in the future. Firstly, strengthen the understanding of the importance of clean production work from an ideological perspective. Implementing clean production is not only about companies purchasing pollution control equipment to cope with environmental inspections, but more importantly, it is about realizing that this is a transformation of the production mode that runs through the entire process of raw material procurement, processing, and sales, turning passive environmental protection into active environmental protection. Secondly, based on relevant international standards for enterprise management and combined with the actual situation of the enterprise, improve corresponding work processes, establish relevant departments and institutions, formulate practical and feasible rules and regulations, and ensure the effective implementation of enterprise strategies from personnel allocation and institutional aspects. Thirdly, further emphasis should be placed on innovation and technological research and development. At present, many electroplating enterprises are still in the development stage of "processing with supplied materials" and do not have enough consideration for the long-term development of the enterprise. In fact, innovation is always the source of vitality for a company and the internal guarantee for its long-term prosperity. Only by investing funds in research and development of new technologies can enterprises maintain a leading position in the industry and achieve the fastest growth in the process of leading industry development.

3 Summary

After decades of development, China's electroplating industry has accumulated a wealth of experience, gradually completed the transformation from a major electroplating country to a strong electroplating country, and has the potential for rapid development. Meanwhile, since the 2008 financial crisis, China's economy has stabilized and improved, and the overall international economic environment is gradually warming up, leading to an increasing demand for electroplating. Due to its irreplaceable role in various industrial sectors, electroplating has always been one of the important industries related to the overall industrial development and a sunrise industry in the 21st century.

At the beginning of China's 12th Five Year Plan, the electroplating industry has gained a good strategic development opportunity, and a beautiful blueprint has been drawn. Therefore, all electroplating professionals should seize the opportunity, face difficulties, implement various planning contents, and strive for China to become a strong electroplating country!

Reference

Chen Fancai. Modern Electroplating Technology [M], China Textile Press, 2008

[2] Draft of the 12th Five Year Plan for the Development of China's Electroplating Industry

[3] Caused by radium The PCB industry is booming and the industry supporting facilities are becoming increasingly perfect [J], Printed Circuit Information, Issue 7, 2010

[4] Guan Tao. The Current Situation of China's Electroplating Industry [J], Metal World, January 2005

[5] Zhu Longji. Research on Clean Production of Electroplating [D], Master's Thesis, Shandong University, 2007

[6] Li Jiazhu. Development Trends of Clean Production in Electroplating Industry [J], Surface Engineering Information, June 2004

Yang Jing's Exploration of Sustainable Development of Electroplating Industrial Parks Based on Clean Production [D], Master's Thesis, Nanchang University, 2007

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