(Yicai Global) Jan. 4 -- The Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical unit of state oil and gas giant Sinopec broke ground today on a plant for larger bundles of carbon fiber [48,000 filaments per tow] whose investment is CNY3.5 billion (USD535.7 million), and which will change the current setup in which China’s supply of such new materials depends on imports.

The project with annual capacity of 12,000 tons is set to complete construction and start operation by 2024, Shanghai Observer reported.

Only a handful of developed nations, including the US and Japan, have mastered the manufacturing technologies for these carbon fiber products. China will thus only be able to produce small-bundle carbon fiber with filaments in each tow ranging from 1,000 to 12,000 until the project gets up and running. 

This project will apply polyacrylonitrile carbon-based fiber technology Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical independently developed to manufacture the fibers via multiple procedures, including polymerization, spinning, oxidation, carbonization and post-processing. The plant will be fitted with six production lines with respective annual production of 2,000 tons. 

The Shanghai-based petrochemical company, which also produces ethylene, fiber, resin and other plastics, set up an innovation research institute for emerging materials to research and develop new substances, with its main aim being attaining engineering technologies for carbon fiber production.

The 48K carbon fiber in larger bundles refers to that with more than 48,000 filaments in each tow, which weighs less than one-quarter as much as steel, but is seven to nine times stronger. This widely-applied material is also anti-corrosive and has a high modulus, which is the measure of a material’s resistance to elastic deformation under stress.

Editor: Ben Armour, Xiao Yi