The steel industry accelerated the pace of upgrading

The iron and steel industry is an important basic industry of the national economy, an important support for building a modern power, and an important field for achieving green and low-carbon development.

As a global steel production and consumption center, China's crude steel output has ranked first in the world for 26 consecutive years. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the steel industry has actively adapted to the new situation and new changes, solidly promoted supply-side structural reform, accelerated industrial transformation and upgrading, better met the needs of national economic development, and the industry has broader prospects for high-quality development.

Power the supply side

Hundred steel, can also become soft around the fingers.

In the production workshop of Shanxi Taigang Stainless Steel Precision Strip Co., LTD., the 3-ton stainless steel plate is softened by annealing and multi-pass rolling, the thickness is reduced from 0.8 mm to 0.015 mm, and it becomes a thin "hand-torn steel", which has become an indispensable basic material in high-end and cutting-edge manufacturing fields.

The price of 1 ton of conventional sheet steel is 20,000 yuan, while the price of 0.015 mm thickness stainless steel produced by Taigang Fine Belt company is as high as 1.5 million yuan/ton. "Low-end products are saturated, and there is no way out of a price war. Only the courage to innovate, research and development of high-grade stainless steel products, occupy the commanding heights of the market, in order to highlight the siege!" The head of the company said.

In order to seize the high-end, the R&D team of Tailang precision belt lasted more than two years to research and develop, has overcome 175 equipment problems, 452 process problems, experienced more than 700 tests, and achieved mass production of "hand-torn steel" with a thickness of only 0.02 mm in 2018. Since then, it has achieved a breakthrough of only 0.015 mm in thickness.

Products and technology are the foundation of an enterprise's existence. In the past 10 years, the steel industry's material research and development capacity has been significantly enhanced, and the proportion of high-end product production and application has been significantly increased. The independent research and development of a large number of high-quality key products has strongly supported the steel materials used in high-end equipment manufacturing. The axle and bogie materials of high-speed EMus with a speed of 350 kilometers per hour have successfully completed the operation assessment. The research and development and production of high-strength thermoformed automotive panels and high-performance silicon steel for new energy vehicle motors have taken an international leading position.

China's economy has shifted from a stage of rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development. Under the guidance of policies and forced by the market, the steel industry is pushing forward supply-side structural reform, using addition and subtraction, strengthening innovative supply and effective supply, eliminating ineffective supply, and resolutely eliminating backwardness.

After efforts, China completed the target of 150 million tons of steel production capacity in the "13th Five-Year Plan" period in 2018 ahead of schedule, banned 140 million tons of "strip steel", and a large number of long-term low-end backward production capacity was cleared.

Zhang Haideng, deputy director of the raw material Industry Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that through the continuous development of steel capacity reduction and transformation, the development resilience of the steel industry has been significantly enhanced, the capacity utilization rate has basically returned to a reasonable range, the industrial structure is more reasonable, and the industrial concentration has been significantly improved. In 2021, China's key large and medium-sized steel enterprises achieved profits of more than 350 billion yuan, reaching the best level in history. The domestic steel market share exceeded 99%, 22 categories of steel products, 19 categories of steel products self-sufficiency rate reached 100%, the supply capacity significantly increased.

Accelerate green development

In the context of the implementation of the "double carbon" goal, how does the steel industry, as a major carbon emitter in the manufacturing industry, turn the challenge into an opportunity?

"Hydrogen energy utilization is the best way to achieve low carbon or even zero carbon emissions in the steel industry, especially the innovation and application of hydrogen metallurgy technology, will bring revolutionary changes in traditional iron and steel metallurgy technology, so that steel production can get rid of the absolute dependence on fossil energy, and solve the problem of carbon emissions from the source." He Steel Group chairman Yu Yong said.

Upgrading from "carbon metallurgy" to "hydrogen metallurgy" is a major change in iron and steel metallurgy process. On November 22, 2019, Hesteel Group and Italy Tenion Group signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in hydrogen metallurgy technology. With Zhang Xuan Technology as the carrying platform, the world's most advanced hydrogen production and hydrogen reduction technology is used to promote the implementation of the world's first 1.2 million tons of hydrogen metallurgy demonstration project. Compared with the same production scale of the traditional full-process blast furnace ironmaking "carbon metallurgy" industry, the project can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 70%, sulfur dioxide by 50% and dust by 90% per year.