Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Puts 48K Large-Tow Carbon Fiber Production Line into Operation

Known as the "King of New Materials" and "Black Gold", carbon fiber is a national strategic emerging material. On May 8, the first phase of Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical’s 30,000-ton/year large-tow carbon fiber project started feeding and produced qualified products, with performance reaching the international advanced level. This marks the completion and commissioning of China’s largest single-line capacity 48K large-tow carbon fiber production line.

Sinopec News Network reports that the project is located in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, with a 100% localization rate of key equipment and a circular industrial chain integrating green energy and high-end new materials. Benefiting from the abundant wind and solar energy resources in Inner Mongolia, the project’s green electricity utilization rate can reach more than 60%, reducing carbon emissions by 20,000 tons per year per production line compared with coal-fired power, equivalent to planting 1.25 million trees.

In the carbon fiber industry, large-tow carbon fiber usually refers to those with more than 48,000 filaments per tow (48K). Compared with small-tow carbon fiber, it has obvious advantages in large-scale application, with higher single-line output and lower production cost under the same production conditions. The large-tow carbon fiber produced by Shanghai Petrochemical is a high-strength new fiber material with a carbon content of more than 95%, whose density is less than one quarter of steel, but strength is 7 to 9 times that of steel, and it also has corrosion resistance.

Sinopec is the first enterprise in China and the fourth in the world to master 48K large-tow carbon fiber technology. It put China’s first fully localized 48K large-tow carbon fiber production line into operation in October 2022, and its independently developed 60K large-tow carbon fiber new product launched in 2025 filled the domestic market gap, which can be applied in high-end scenarios such as deep-sea wind power.

Based on the original large-tow carbon fiber technology, the first phase of the 30,000-ton/year project has increased the single-line capacity by 50% compared with the existing production lines through continuous research and iterative optimization. The second phase, with 8 production lines, is expected to be fully put into operation by the end of 2027.

Moving forward, Sinopec will continue to deepen technological research, expand the production scale of large-tow carbon fiber, and enrich product specifications. It will further improve the circular industrial chain, attract downstream cooperative enterprises to settle in Ordos, and provide strong support for the high-quality development of China’s new material industry and green transformation.