A few days ago, good news came from the steel tube and bar division of Baosteel Co., Ltd! The proportion of high performance and low cost of products and the quality had been significantly improved after the commissioning of No.2 reheating heat treatment line of Lubao steel pipe PQF unit equipped with “seamless steel pipe online cooling control technology”, meanwhile, the green manufacturing and benefit promotion has also been recognized and realized!
Control cooling technology, as an effective means of online control in microstructure and properties of hot-rolled steel, has been widely used in hot-rolled plate, strip, rod and wire, section steel and other fields. However, due to the particularity of section shape and production process, seamless steel tube products lack effective performance control means, the production energy consumption is nearly twice that of hot-rolled strip, which restricts the green and high-end development of seamless steel tube products. Therefore, online microstructure control technology of hot-rolled seamless steel tube has become the key direction of the 13th five year plan in steel pipe industry.
Nothing is impossible
Since 2014, the Central Research Institute of Baosteel Co., Ltd. and the steel tube and bar business division of Baosteel Co., Ltd. fully cooperated with Northeastern University, have formed a “online cooling control technology” research team. Afterwards, the world’s first set of industrial equipment platform for controlled cooling of hot-rolling seamless steel tubes with accurate temperature control has been developed and put into operation in the 460PQF unit of Lubao steel tube, this set of equipment has realized the precise control of temperature in steel tube hot rolling production for the first time. Relying on this platform, Baosteel has independently developed a series of cooling control technology, which makes the production process more efficient and intensive.
Professionalization
In recent years, the research team has made breakthroughs in the design of high-performance steel, cooling path and the homogenization cooling technology of ultra thick wall pipe, and has successfully developed high-strength, low-cost structural pipe, pipeline, oil cylinder pipe and other new products. At the beginning of this year, with the commissioning of Lubao steel pipe No.2 reheating heat treatment line, the research team has successively developed direct quenching low stress steel grades and cooling process for casing pipe, pipeline and other varieties, which had greatly alleviated the capacity pressure of heat treatment.
It is reported that the output of control cooling platform has reached more than 200% of the initial production after the expansion and application of online control cooling technology, with a monthly output of nearly 30,000 tons and more than 20 applied product brands. The average energy consumption per ton of steel product has been reduced by more than 20 kg of standard coal, the manufacturing cycle has been shortened by more than 3 days, and the cumulative steel pipe output has exceeded 500,000 tons, which has brought significant economic benefits for the enterprise and effectively promoted the development of seamless steel pipe production.
Source: Baosteel Co., Ltd