On January 4, 2021, Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical's "24,000 tons/year raw silk, 12,000 tons/year 48K large tow carbon fiber" project with a total investment of 3.5 billion yuan, officially started construction as a major industrial project in Shanghai. The project is scheduled to be completed by 2024. After the project is put into production, it will change the situation that my country's large tow carbon fiber is all dependent on imports and long-term supply is in short supply. It will strongly promote the development of the domestic carbon fiber industry and help China's manufacturing.
In the carbon fiber industry, those with more than 48,000 carbon fibers per bundle (48K for short) are usually called large tow carbon fibers. At present, each domestic carbon fiber is basically between 1,000 and 12,000, which is called small tow. The biggest advantage of the 48K large tow is that under the same production conditions, it can greatly increase the single-line carbon fiber production capacity and quality performance, and realize the low cost of production, thereby breaking the application limitation caused by the high price of carbon fiber.
Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical is the first domestic enterprise to break through the industrialization technology of 48K large tow carbon fiber. The launch of this project indicates that the company's large-tow carbon fiber has successfully embarked on the road of large-scale production from R&D trial production and industrialization.
The project adopts self-developed PAN (polyacrylonitrile)-based large tow precursor and carbon fiber technology. The process route is NaSCN (sodium thiocyanate) continuous solution polymerization wet spinning precursor, oxidation, low-temperature carbonization, high-temperature carbonization and post-treatment , To build 2 raw silk series with a capacity of 24,000 tons/year; 3 oxidation carbonization workshops, each with 2 2,000 tons/year carbon fiber production lines.
The company’s industrialized large-tow carbon fiber has proved its performance. After being tempered in an oxidation furnace and carbonization furnace, the raw silk is black and shiny when it comes out of the furnace. It has become a new type of high strength and high modulus with a carbon content of more than 95%. Fiber material. Its mechanical properties are excellent, its specific gravity is less than a quarter of steel, but its strength is 7 to 9 times that of steel, and it also has the characteristics of corrosion resistance and high modulus. It is called "the king of new materials" and is also called As "black gold", it has broad application prospects in all walks of life.
It is understood that Shanghai Petrochemical is one of my country's large-scale synthetic fiber production bases. Its acrylic fiber production and technical capabilities rank first in the country. The development and production technology of apparel fiber products have reached the advanced level at home and abroad. Relying on its strong technical advantages, in 2007, when Sinopec decided to deploy PAN-based carbon fiber research and development and industrialization, it handed over the development of the carbon fiber industry to Shanghai Petrochemical.
Carbon fiber technology has strict technical barriers, and so far only a few developed countries such as Japan and the United States have owned and mastered it. In this regard, with the strong support of Sinopec and Shanghai, Shanghai Petrochemical, together with dozens of research institutes, universities, and enterprises such as Shanghai Research Institute of Petroleum and Chemical Industry, Shanghai Engineering Company, Fudan University, etc. The road of collaborative innovation combining “production, learning, research and application”.
On August 28, 2020, Shanghai Petrochemical Advanced Materials Innovation Research Institute was inaugurated. This is an important measure launched by the company in technological innovation, which will strongly promote the transformation and upgrading of the corporate industrial structure and help build a mid-to-high-end new material industry base in the Yangtze River Delta.
One of the three major functions of the newly established Innovation Research Institute is to carry out core technology research, focus on forming a complete set of carbon fiber engineering technology, and concentrate on promoting key core technology research and industrial innovation.
Ten years of work has formed the cornerstone of carbon fiber development. On this basis, in order to increase the production capacity of raw silk and realize the large-scale production of large tow carbon fibers, thereby reducing the production and use costs of large tow carbon fibers, with the support of Sinopec, the construction of 24,000 tons/year of raw silk, 12,000 tons/year 48K large tow carbon fiber project. At present, various construction preparations have been carried out smoothly as planned, and the conditions for construction are ready.
