Green Change Helps The Steel Industry To Achieve The Dual Carbon Goal

"Faced with the'dual carbon' goal, whoever realizes the green and low-carbon transformation first will be able to take the initiative in the future competition. The'dual carbon' requirement is an important challenge facing the steel industry, and it is also an unprecedented transformation opportunity for this traditional industry "Recently, the relevant person in charge of Baosteel Co., Ltd. said in an interview with reporters.

At present, in the face of the complex and changeable domestic and foreign environment, my country's economy has recovered stably and the development foundation has become more solid, which has promoted the strong demand for the domestic steel market. At the same time, the increase in demand from major overseas economies and the expansion of global trade have actively boosted steel exports.

The person in charge also pointed out that the domestic and international environment is still complicated and there are many uncertain and unstable factors. On the one hand, due to the influence of many factors such as seasonal cycles, major events, environmental constraints, resource bottlenecks, etc., steel demand will be relatively weakened; on the other hand, the steel industry must improve the dynamic adaptability of domestic steel product supply and demand, and avoid steel products. The price fluctuates greatly, and it is necessary to guard against the pressure and risk of steel costs caused by the large fluctuations in the prices of bulk raw materials and fuels.

Digital transformation brings new development opportunities

At present, all walks of life are continuously attaching importance to high-quality development. As far as the steel industry is concerned, this background will promote technological innovation and research and development of key steel products, increase investment in technological innovation, continue to pursue operational quality and efficiency improvements, promote intelligent manufacturing and digital transformation, thereby enhancing overall competitiveness and creating a positive environment.

In this regard, the above-mentioned person in charge introduced that Baosteel has adopted smart manufacturing as a strategic task in its strategic planning to vigorously promote steel manufacturing through smart manufacturing. Specifically, 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 realize "automation of operations and intelligent management." , Intelligent decision-making", to create a new competitive advantage in the digital age.

"The company is also 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 person in charge said.

At the end of last year, Baosteel's Big Data Center was completed and put into use. It is understood that this is the first big data center in China's steel industry. This smart manufacturing infrastructure with a "cloud-side-to-end" architecture will achieve the optimization and evolution of the information architecture in about three years, breaking the "information island". , To create an application-interconnected digital ecosystem, drive the intelligent and digital transformation of traditional steel manufacturing, and help build a future-oriented digital factory.

The data also shows that since 2015, Baosteel has invested a total of nearly 7 billion yuan to basically build an intelligent production line group that runs through the entire process from raw materials entering the factory to finished products leaving the factory. It liberates mental workers from repetitive, inefficient and other low-end mental work, allowing employees to engage in higher-value work more easily, efficiently, and happily. At the same time, the improvement of production line quality indicators, cost indicators, and energy consumption indicators has also been achieved, and economic benefits have been achieved.

Green change helps achieve the "dual carbon" goal

Accelerating the green development of China's steel industry and promoting the steel industry to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality are of great significance to my country's goal of achieving carbon peak and carbon neutrality. At the same time, carbon peaking and carbon neutrality are likely to have a disruptive impact on the production process, product upgrades and competitive situation of the steel industry, and it is a general trend to promote revolutionary metallurgical process innovation.

According to the above-mentioned person in charge, since 2016, Baosteel has invested a total of 14.78 billion yuan in environmental protection transformation funds, which has reduced the comprehensive emissions of air pollutants by 35.9% and added 9.41 million square meters of green space.

Winning this battle of green change is not easy. “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, explore and master key core technologies of green and low-carbon metallurgy, and create future leading advantages in steel technology.” The person in charge introduce.

In fact, China's iron and steel mainly uses blast furnace smelting long-process technology as the mainstream, mainly using coke as the main fuel, and the shortcomings of large carbon emissions are also very obvious. The fact that China's scrap holdings and recycling 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 products.

How 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? The above-mentioned person in charge introduced that Baosteel started from optimizing the energy structure and increasing investment in energy saving and environmental protection technologies to make the production process greener. At present, Baosteel is accelerating the research and development of low-carbon metallurgical technology represented by hydrogen-rich carbon cycle, microwave sintering, and zero-emission hydrogen metallurgy, and explores the technical route for achieving carbon neutrality in the iron and steel industry.

The reporter learned that, on the material and product side, Baosteel focused on the needs of key industries and carried out the whole life cycle assessment of steel products. Starting from the whole life cycle of material use, it carried 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 improve product performance, achieve green product use, improve comprehensive material solution capabilities, and create a green product supply chain.

Relevant industry insiders pointed out that under the guidance of the "dual carbon target, China's steel industry can no longer rely on increasing production capacity to increase production. It needs to increase concentration through mergers and reorganizations. Scale will be one of the important strategic paths for steel companies. Supply-side structure. Sexual reform will be further deepened.