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Harmonious Coexistence of Iron and Steel Enterprise with Eco-city
By Li Xiaobo UpDate
2014-02-18
Editorial note:
The article “Harmonious Coexistence of Iron and Steel Enterprise with Eco-city” authored by Li Xiaobo, Chairman of Taiyuan Iron and Steel (Group) Co. Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as TISCO), was published on Qiushi Journal No. 4 on Feb. 16, 2014. The article made a comprehensive and in-depth description of TISCO’s relentless pursuit and vivid practice of practically continuing to promote green development and realizing the harmonious coexistence with the society from a long-range strategic perspective, which has a great guiding significance for the company employees to remember well the responsibility and mission, further improve TISCO’s green development level and build TISCO into the demonstrator of green steel plant in the world. The full text follows.
Due to historical reasons, a large number of iron and steel enterprises in China were built around the cities and some cities originated and developed from iron and steel companies. The traditional steel production consumes large amounts of resources, generates large amounts of wastes, which heavily polluted the environment. TISCO is located in Taiyuan, Capital of Shanxi Province. After the development of 80 years, TISCO is surrounded by the expanding urban district of Taiyuan and becomes a typical urban type steel plant, therefore it is under considerable pressures of development or relocation. The relocation cannot radically solve the environmental pollution but needs high cost, which directly affects the competitiveness of the enterprise. The harsh reality makes us realize that the sustainable development of TISCO needs to find a way to harmoniously coexist with the community by the production mode of low energy consumption, low pollution and regional circulation. In the past 10 years we explored a way for the green development of urban steel plant in our practice.
1. To develop the enterprise by green manufacturing
The pollution of the traditional iron and steel enterprises mainly comes from the backward production mode and the development patterns of “pollute first and then take measures to control the pollution” and even “only pollute without control”. In order to solve the problem, TISCO implements green manufacturing in its all production processes, changes the end of pipe control mode and realizes cleaner production and controls the pollutes in the production process, which improves the economic and social benefits.
Phase out the backward production capacity. TISCO integrated the most advanced technology, technique and equipment in the world and finished the technological upgrading for all production processes by phasing out the backward smelting and rolling facilities such as outdated coke battery, small blast furnaces, small sintering machines and small EAFs from the beginning of this century. Its stainless steel production lines can produce the best quality products with the most economic input and the minimum pollutant emission, which greatly improves the green manufacturing level of the contemporary stainless steel industry.
Focus on the construction of the circulation mode. TISCO invested more than 13 billion yuan to have constructed 140 environmental protection and energy saving projects from 2002 to 2013, formed a relatively complete circular economy industry chain for solid, liquid and gaseous wastes. Now the waste water, acids, gases, slag and waste heat and pressure generated in TISCO are efficiently treated and recycled. During the implementation of the environmental protection and energy saving projects, TISCO pioneered in integrating the most advanced environmental protection and energy saving technologies in the world many times. For example, when implementing the flue gas control project for the sintering process, we made a comparative analysis of the relative technologies of the world and decided to pioneer in utilizing the activated carbon adsorption technology in iron and steel industry, constructed the sintering flue gas desulfurization, de-nitration and acids-making project which integrated the desulfurization, de-nitration, de-dioxin, removal of heavy metals and de-dust into one system. Although the investment of the project was 2-3 times higher than that of the conventional technology, it fundamentally solved the pollution problem of the sintering system. After the completion of the project, every year 60000 tons of sulfuric acid with concentration of 98% can be produced by recovering SO2, all the sulfuric acid is used in our production process, which not only reduces the pollutant discharge but also the procurement of sulfuric acid. The amount of the slag generated during the iron and steel making is up to 12-20% of the output of the crude steel. When disposing the slag as waste, it not only occupies a large amount of land but also pollutes the environment. Therefore TISCO joint ventured the most advanced slag comprehensive utilization plant in China with a American company. The plant treats 1.5 million tons of stainless steel slag and 1 million tons of carbon steel slag every year, and the value-added products of the plant, such as the fertilizer, roadbed material and ultrafine powder made of steel slag, have brought good economic benefit. Now 100% of the solid waste, industrial waste water and industrial waste acids generated by TISCO is recycled. The utilization of secondary recovery energy makes up to 48.6% of the total energy needed by TISCO. Because the recycling of the treated waste water, lots of make-up water are saved. In 2013, the water consumption per ton of steel is reduced to 1.5 ton, which is the lowest in the industry in the world.
2. Serve the society with green products
Steel products have longer life cycle, the energy saving and emission reduction in their life cycle is more significant than that in their production. TISCO gives high priority to the R&D of green steel products and the optimization of the product structure, focuses on the development of new high-tech product materials, such as high temperature resistant, high pressure resistant, corrosion resistant, ultra low temperature resistant, high strength and high toughness steel products, continuously optimizes the product structure, develops lots of green steel products with lightweight, longer service life and easy recycle over the years. Its products have been widely used in railway, automobile, shipbuilding, power generation, petrochemical, aerospace and aviation, and precision manufacturing fields. Among them, the domestic market share of 28 products are No.1, 36 products filled the gaps in China and substituted for the imported ones, which provides strong material support for the transformation and upgrading of the downstream industries and makes contributions to the construction of a resource-conserving and environment-friendly society.
TISCO is the first to successfully develop the stainless steel for railway wagon in China. Its products have been used in the manufacturing of 40000 C80 railway wagons running on Datong- Qinhuangdao line. The railway wagon has the advantages of light-weight, low maintenance cost and high carrying capacity. The duplex stainless steel developed by TISCO has substituted for the imported and TISCO is the exclusive duplex stainless steel supplier for Hong Kong -Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. In comparison with the conventional steel, TISCO overcame the world problem and successfully developed the stainless steel material for the reactor internals of the third generation of nuclear power unit, AP1000. More than 20 products, such as stainless steel and pure iron developed by TISCO, have been used in the critical parts of Dongfeng series rockets, Shenzhou Series spacecraft, Tiangong-1 module. In comparison with 2002, the stainless steel output of TISCO increased more than 7 times. In 2013, the proportion of the efficient, energy-saving and long service life products in TISCO increased to 78% from less than 35% in 2002. The economic benefits generated by these products accounts to more than 85% of TISCO’s total benefits.
3. Integrate into the society as a green enterprise
A valued and responsible urban steel plant not only provides quality steel products and services for the society but also should harmoniously coexist and functionally complement with the city. In recent years, TISCO has obtained a number of advanced energy-saving and emission reduction technologies with independent intellectual property rights. These technologies have been used in relevant industries at lower costs and helped them improve their green development level. For instance, we established a engineering technology company to export the technologies of minor negative pressure 7.63m coke oven; coke oven gas desulfurization, de-cyanation and acid-making; membrane method waste water treatment; reclamation of precipitator dusts; and fertilizer making with steel slag. At the same time, we focused on collaborative innovation, we established a joint innovation center for energy-saving and emission reduction with Huawei Company in order to give a full play to the advantages of both sides in industrialization and informatization and promote the commercial application of the energy-saving and emission reduction technology. TISCO is changing from the beneficiary to the inventor and exporter of the high and new green development technologies.
TISCO also assumes the obligations of city construction through the vigorous development of the green industry. In 2002, TISCO built a membrane water treatment line for advanced waste water treatment which was the first and the largest in China metallurgical industry. Now TISCO recycles 60000 tons of urban domestic sewage every day, reduces 5000 tons of COD emission every year. TISCO supplies centralized heating for more than 14000000 m2 residential apartments by recovering of the waste heat in the production process, which phases out all the small coal-fired boilers in the heating area, reduces 2800 tons of SO2 emission and 4200 tons of dust emission and saves 42000 tons of coal every year. In addition, TISCO is actively carrying out the recycling utilization of the urban wastes and implementing the plant area greening work on a large scale, the plant area green coverage rate has reached 40.6%.
The task of energy-saving and emission reduction for the metallurgical industry is arduous, and the road ahead is a long one. Gaps still exists between TISCO and the green enterprises. In order to head down the road of green, cyclic and low carbon development and make greater contribution for the green transformation of China metallurgical industry and the construction of beautiful China, we will take the risks that that no one else wants to take, invest the capital that no one else wants to invest and build new environmental protection project that no one else wants to build.