February 17, 2025 – Acrylic fiber, hailed as “synthetic wool,” has been shining brightly in the textile industry in recent years. Among the various types, solution-dyed acrylic fiber, a green and eco-friendly product developed independently by Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Company, has particularly caught the spotlight. But what exactly is solution-dyed acrylic fiber? It is a colored acrylic fiber produced by adding a specific proportion of dye to the spinning solution and mixing it under certain process conditions.
Solution-dyed acrylic fiber is not only soft, lightweight, and excellent in warmth retention but also features pest resistance and corrosion resistance. Compared with other acrylic products, its uniqueness lies in the dyeing process being completed before the fiber is formed, effectively solving issues such as uneven dyeing. As a result, it boasts uniform dyeing, high color fastness, and a high dye uptake rate, remaining resilient to fading even after prolonged sun exposure. More importantly, it hardly generates colored wastewater during production and post-processing, highlighting its remarkable eco-friendly characteristics.
According to AsiaMB’s industry insights, with the continuous improvement of domestic and international market requirements for clothing quality, warmth retention, color, hand feel, and other aspects, solution-dyed acrylic fiber has stood out with its unique advantages and is deeply favored by customers worldwide. Today, it has found widespread application in various fields including knitted apparel fabrics, artificial fur, home textiles, outdoor shading, and high-end decorative materials for exterior use, boasting a promising market prospect.
However, there are only a few enterprises capable of mass-producing solution-dyed acrylic fiber. Globally, companies like AKSA in Turkey, DOLAN in Germany, and Montefiber in Italy are among the few that possess this capability. Domestically, Jilin Chemical Fiber Group and the Jinyang Acrylic Fiber Plant under Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical’s Carbon Fiber Business Department are the main producers.
The production process of solution-dyed acrylic fiber is indeed a technical feat. Petroleum undergoes distillation processing in a refinery’s atmospheric and vacuum distillation unit to extract components such as naphtha. The naphtha is then fed into an ethylene plant and cracked into propylene in an ethylene cracking furnace at temperatures ranging from 700 to 900 degrees Celsius. Subsequently, propylene undergoes an ammonia oxidation reaction with ammonia and oxygen in the presence of a catalyst to produce acrylonitrile, the raw material for acrylic fiber. After polymerization and desolventization, acrylonitrile is mixed with a solvent to prepare the spinning solution. At this stage, different colors of dye are added and thoroughly mixed with the spinning solution. The colored slurry then enters the spinning machine. Finally, the slurry exiting the spinnerets of the spinning machine undergoes processes such as stretching, drying, and setting to form fibers, thus producing solution-dyed acrylic fiber.