On October 10, the first production line of China’s first 10 000-ton-scale 48k large tow carbon fiber project was put into operation at the carbon fiber industrial base of Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co., Ltd., and qualified products were produced.

Shanghai Petrochemical's 10 000-ton 48k large tow carbon fiber project adopts the polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-based large-tow strand and carbon fiber technology. The project is independently developed by Sinopec and will be fully completed in 2024, with a production capacity of 24 000 t/a raw silk, 12 000 t/a large tow carbon fiber. This production line was preliminarily completed on August 16 this year, and it could achieve large-scale and high-quality production.

Usually, we refer to bundle with more than 48 000 (referred to as 48k) carbon fibers as large tow carbon fibers. China has made breakthroughs in small tow carbon fibers (the number of carbon fibers per bundle is 1 000 to 12 000), but its high cost has affected the enthusiasm of downstream enterprises in application. Large tow carbon fiber can greatly increase the single-line production capacity under the same production conditions, and can achieve low-cost production, thereby breaking the application limitations caused by the high price of carbon fiber.

In addition, Sinopec is not only a research and development and production enterprise of large tow carbon fibers, but also a research and development and application enterprise of carbon fiber composite materials. So far, Sinopec has owned 251 carbon fiber-related patents and 46 carbon fiber composite materials patents, ranking first in China and third in the world.