The adipic acid industry is undergoing a transformation: China's green technology breakthroughs and

Recently, the global adipic acid market has shown an unprecedentedly active situation under the intertwined influence of technological innovation and industrial transformation. On the one hand, the green electrochemical synthesis technology represented by Chinese research teams has made a major breakthrough, which is expected to fundamentally change the traditional high - pollution production mode; on the other hand, the successful exploration of North American startups on the bio - based route has opened up a low - carbon future based on renewable resources for the industry. Meanwhile, the Chinese market, as the world's largest producer, is experiencing changes in the supply - demand pattern brought about by the transformation of the downstream demand structure.

🔬 Technological innovation: Chinese team opens up a new path for green electrochemical synthesis

The traditional production process of adipic acid heavily relies on nitric acid oxidation, which emits a large amount of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, and consumes a relatively high amount of energy. Recently, the research published by a scientific research team from Shanxi University in the top - tier chemical journal "Journal of the American Chemical Society" has provided a brand - new solution to this problem.

The team innovatively designed a "Pickering emulsion droplet electrode" reactor.Under mild conditions of normal temperature and pressure, using water as the oxygen source, they successfully achieved the direct electrosynthesis of adipic acid from crude cyclohexene.This process completely avoids the use of nitric acid and the emission of related pollutants in the traditional process. Experimental data shows that the new system can not only operate stably at an ampere - level current densityfor more than 1000 hours, showing excellent stability, and its selectivity for the yield of adipic acid is as high asabout 95%, and the efficiency of converting electrical energy into chemical energy (Faraday efficiency) also reachesabout 80%. More importantly, the research team has successfully achieved the scale - up synthesis of 100 - gram level, marking a crucial step for this technology towards industrial application.

📈 Market situation: Tight supply - demand in China, nylon 66 becomes a new growth engine

As the world's largest producer and consumer of adipic acid, China's market dynamics directly affect the global supply pattern. Based on the latest data from multiple industry information agencies, the current Chinese market shows the following prominent features:

• Prices remain high: As of early March 2026, the benchmark price of the domestic adipic acid market remained at8,300 yuan/tonor so, and the mainstream transaction price in the East China region fluctuated in the range of8,000 - 8,300 yuan/ton, at a high level in the past year.

• Supply - demand pattern tightens: Analyses by institutions such as Haitong Securities point out that with the large - scale commissioning and capacity release of downstream nylon 66 (PA66) projects, the demand for adipic acid will show an explosive growth, which is expected to quickly change the current market balance. Calculations show that there may be a supply gap of203,400 tonsin the domestic adipic acid market in 2026, and the market is shifting from a tight balance to a supply shortage.

• Downstream demand structure changes: Although traditional polyurethane fields such as sole stock solution and PU slurry are still the main application directions of adipic acid at present (with a combined proportion of about 59%), the core driving force for future demand growth has clearly shifted tothe nylon 66 industryIn contrast, despite the broad prospects of the degradable plastic PBAT (polybutylene adipate/terephthalate), restricted by the current sluggish market demand, its actual driving effect on adipic acid remains relatively limited.