- Steel giant Baosteel fast-tracking introduction of hydrogen metallurgy
- Focus on digitisation, smart production
- Need to find low-carbon solutions in blast furnace steelmaking
China has set the ‘dual carbon’ goal and only companies that take the green and low-carbon transition route will be able to seize the initiative. The ‘dual carbon’ requirement is an important challenge facing the steel industry, and “it is also an unprecedented transformation opportunity for the industry,” a senior official of China’s Baosteel Co. said in an interview recently.
Apart from strong domestic steel demand in China, the increase in demand from major overseas economies and the expansion of global trade have actively boosted steel exports.
Seasonal cycles, major events, environmental constraints, and resource bottlenecks impact steel demand and the industry must improve the dynamic adaptability of domestic steel product supply and demand.
It is necessary for companies to guard against sharp fluctuations in prices and the risk of rising production costs caused by volatility in the prices of bulk raw materials and fuels.
Smart manufacturing
Baosteel has adopted smart manufacturing as a strategic task in its planning to promote smart steel manufacturing, the official stated. The core businesses of marketing, procurement, R&D, manufacturing, logistics, and services are used as the entry point for digital and intelligent transformation, and a precise, real-time, and efficient data interconnection system is used as the link to realise automation of operations and intelligent management.
Intelligent decision-making is needed to create a new competitive advantage in the digital age.
“Baosteel is actively promoting external cooperation, exploring and promoting cross-industry cooperation with companies such as Alibaba Cloud, and actively using digital technologies such as big data processing to transform traditional industries,” the official informed.
Towards a digital factory
Towards the end of last year, Baosteel’s Big Data Centre was completed and put into use. It is the first big data centre in China’s steel industry. This smart manufacturing infrastructure with a “cloud-side-end” architecture will create an application-interconnected digital ecosystem, drive the intelligent and digital transformation of traditional steel manufacturing, and help build a digital factory for the future.
Data shows that since 2015 Baosteel has invested a total of nearly RMB 7 billion ($1.96 billion) to build an intelligent production line that runs through the entire process from raw materials entering the factory to finished products leaving the factory.
Improvements in production line quality indicators, cost indicators and energy consumption indicators have been achieved, thereby promoting economic benefits.
Energy transition & ‘dual carbon’ goal
Carbon peaking and carbon neutrality are likely to have a disruptive impact on the production process, product upgrades and the competitive situation of the steel industry.
Since 2016, Baosteel has invested a total of RMB 14.78 billion ($2.3 billion) in environmental protection transformation funds, which has reduced the comprehensive emissions of air pollutants by 35.9% and added 9.41 million square metres of green space.
“In the future, Baosteel will accelerate the advancement of green and low-carbon metallurgical innovation projects, carry out research and development of forward-looking, subversive, and breakthrough innovations in steel, and explore and master key core technologies of low-carbon metallurgy,” the executive stated.
Scaling up low-carbon smelting
China’s iron and steel industry mainly uses blast furnace smelting and long-process technology, mainly using coke as the main fuel, and the shortcomings of carbon emissions are also very obvious. The fact that China’s scrap steel holdings and recycling volumes are small has led to the short-term low-carbon process of electric furnaces that is temporarily insufficient to meet the national economy’s demand for steel.
The challenge is to achieve a breakthrough in the key technology of low-carbon smelting in traditional blast furnaces and form a low-carbon metallurgical route suitable for China’s national conditions.
Baosteel started from optimising the energy structure and increasing investment in energy savings and environmental protection technologies to make the production process greener.
At present, the company is accelerating research and development of low-carbon metallurgy represented by hydrogen-rich carbon cycle, microwave sintering, and zero-emission hydrogen metallurgy.
The company focuses on the needs of key industries and carries out the whole lifecycle assessment of steel products. Starting from the whole lifecycle of material use, it carries out the development of steel products based on the assessment of resource consumption and carbon emissions.
Green design, through the strategy of high-quality products, greatly improves product performance, achieves green product use, improves comprehensive material solution capabilities, and creates a green product supply chain.
Under the guidance of the ‘dual carbon’ target, China’s steel industry can no longer rely on increasing production capacity. It needs to increase concentration through mergers and reorganisations. Scale will be one of the important strategic paths for steel companies and supply-side structural reforms will be further deepened.
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