Dust is flying, smoke is filling, steel flowers are splashing, and ...... is deafeningThis is the old impression of a steel mill. Recently, the reporter visited the "eldest son of the iron and steel industry of the Republic" - Anshan Iron and Steel Group, the second largest iron and steel enterprise in China, and found that everything has become an old yellow calendar.
Instead, under the blue sky and white clouds, the mine blasts accurate to the centimeter, the ore transportation is unmanned, and the beneficiation, steelmaking, steel rolling, and baling are almost all computer-operated, and the assembly line is automatically operated ......After multiple processes, pieces of ore have magically become the deck of ocean-going ships, the bridge plates across mountains and seas, the exterior walls of terminals, the components of Olympic venues, the exterior panels of household appliances, and the shells ......of automobiles
The high-quality quenching of this century-old steel mill stems from its non-stop digital construction in recent years and the three stories it has told: the beautiful transformation of a stone, the digital closed loop of production and the intelligent journey of an order.
Anshan Iron and Steel Quenching not only represents China's iron and steel industry, but also reflects the new process of the entire manufacturing industry moving towards high-end, intelligent and green.
Silky production is refreshing.
Anshan Iron and Steel Group is the first large-scale iron and steel complex to resume construction in New China and the earliest steel production base to be built, known as the "eldest son of the iron and steel industry of the Republic" and "the cradle of the new China's iron and steel industry", and its products are widely used in ships, automobiles, railways, home appliances and other fields, becoming the steel backbone of a major country. The Group's crude steel production capacity is 63 million tons, ranking first in China.
Second, the third in the world;The annual output of iron ore concentrate is 50 million tons, ranking first in ChinaIt is the world's largest vanadium production enterprise and China's largest titanium raw material production base.
The reporter pondered: "Isn't such a big enterprise a large energy consumption plant and a source of pollution?"As a result, the company gave us a vivid lesson in modern industry.
Qidashan Iron Mine is one of the important iron ore and iron concentrate production bases of Anshan Iron and Steel, and is a modern and large-scale metallurgical mining enterprise integrating mining and mineral processing. In the mining area of more than 10 square kilometers, ore is blasted and excavated every day, and processed into iron powder for steel mill smelting and production. In the hall of the intelligent control center of Qidashan Iron Mine, a row of large screens supervise, schedule, and control the production of the entire mine, and every corner is in full view. Meng Wei, the driver of the drilling rig, pressed the operation button on the central console, and the No. 12 and No. 18 cone drilling rigs, which were several kilometers away, began to work, and the whole set of work of hole finding, leveling, drilling and drilling was completed in one go.
Pan Pengfei, director of Qidashan Iron Mine, told reporters that a three-dimensional geological model has been established in the entire mining area, and the attributes, quality and composition of ore and rock at each point in the stope are clear. The computer can carry out accurate mining design according to the model, and the drilling and blasting are accurate to the centimeter, and the resource mining is completely dry and squeezed. With the progress of digital mine construction, the design, blasting, excavation, and transportation are all intelligent, and even equipment security inspection is no exception.
Pan Pengfei, director of Qidashan Iron Mine, is explaining the intelligent mining process. Photo by reporter Yuan Xiaokang.
On the side of the road leading to the Qianshan Scenic Area in Anshan City, there is a castle-like building complex on a hill. This is the Guan Baoshan Company of Anshan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd., and it is also the group's more representative "black light factory". Viewed from the top of the mountain, at the foot of the mountain is the iron ore mining area, where the rough-processed ore is transported to the magnetic grinding area at the top of the mountain through a conveyor belt, and the ore is processed by computer proportioning and into a large ball mill. The workshops, which are several stories high, are empty.
Entering the 26-square-kilometer factory area of Anshan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd., thousands of railways, transportation belts, and large and small pipelines crisscross each other, connecting various blast furnaces and production workshops, and the red-hot molten steel is cast into steel ingots and rolled into steel coils.
In the steelmaking operation area of the third branch of Anshan Iron and Steel General Steelmaking Plant, the steelmaking converter furnace is booming. Separated from a wall, the operator in the control room observes the brightness and shape of the furnace fire through the computer screen and judges the slag condition. This smart steelmaking system allows operators to have a "see-through eye" and a "digital brain", which not only improves the working environment, but also improves the efficiency of steelmaking.
The molten steel is hot-rolled into plates, and the scarlet steel plates move rapidly on the conveyor belt, rumbling, sometimes forward and sometimes backward under the rolling mill, and are rolled back and forth. After hundreds of meters of conveyor belts and several rolling processes, the scarlet steel plates have turned into dark silver, are beaten into circles like dough, and the machine automatically bundles, packs, lifts and transports.
In the interview of various production links of Anshan Iron and Steel, the reporter found that basically all of them are automated operations, except for computer operators, only a very small number of maintenance personnel and safety inspectors are active in the workshop. These smooth and silky production processes make people have to admire the rapid progress of enterprise technology and technology.
First, the "wise" daughter has gratifying returns.
With the rapid development of a new generation of information technology such as cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and 5G, Anshan Iron and Steel Group has pressed the "fast forward button" on digital industrialization and industrial digitization, and has continuously promoted the key construction of automation, informatization, digitalization, and intelligence. In the first half of this year, Anshan Iron and Steel Group released 52 new "digital Anshan Iron and Steel" construction projects, with a total investment of 10200 million yuan. These technical inputs and transformations have created amazing benefits.
The benefits of smart operations themselves are considerable. The integrated operation and manufacturing management system of the iron and steel industry has been successively put into operation in five bases of Anshan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd., Bayuquan, Chaoyang, Benxi Iron and Steel Plate, and Benxi Iron and Steel Beiying, and has realized integrated operation control and multi-base collaborative manufacturing by opening up all links of the value chain such as procurement, production, quality, logistics and sales. With the efficiency improvement and manpower reduction brought by the replacement of the old main control room by the centralized control center, it has directly created 8400 million yuan. After the integrated system was launched, the hot-rolled hot loading rate increased by 12%, the work-in-process inventory decreased by 21%, the repair cost per ton of steel was reduced by 17% on average, and the overall equipment efficiency increased by 4%.
In the production workshop of the third branch of the Anshan Iron and Steel General Steelmaking Plant, trains carrying torpedo tanks filled with thousands of degrees of molten iron slowly drove from the iron factory next door, and the molten iron poured into the ladle went through a number of high-temperature processes such as slag scraping, desulfurization, and refining.
In the past, steelmakers had to get as close to the furnace as possible, judging by the color of the flame and the amount of slag produced, which was not only difficult but also dangerous to face the furnace with more than 1,000 degrees. Liu Xin, secretary of the party branch of the third steelmaking operation area of the third branch of the plant, told reporters that after the automation transformation, the "smart steelmaking" has been realized here, and "the front-line operators of the entire steelmaking area only need to control the smelting process in the centralized control center, and the team of less than 20 people per shift can run the production of the steelmaking area." ”
The benefits of smart manufacturing are more intuitive. Combined with the characteristics of the long production process of the enterprise, Anshan Iron and Steel has carried out the construction of intelligent equipment, intelligent units, intelligent production lines, intelligent factories and intelligent bases, and has completed the intelligent transformation of 41 production lines. Qidashan Iron Mine, Guan Baoshan Company, steelmaking, color coating, thick plate, vanadium nitrogen alloy, Bayuquan, Xichang Steel Vanadium and other intelligent factory benchmarking demonstrations have been preliminarily completed. The replacement rate of machines in dirty, tired and dangerous positions increased by 20%, and the automatic control rate of production lines increased by 47%, the centralization rate of the operation room increased by 18%, and the coverage rate of the construction of the production execution system increased by 18%.
Zhai Baopeng, the chief engineer of the information industry of Anshan Iron and Steel Group, took the observation of slag in the steelmaking process as an example to explain intelligent replacement. He said that the inside of the converter of thousands of degrees cannot be directly observed, and can only be inferred by the observation of the flame at the furnace mouth. Now, visual (camera) and auditory (sonar) sensors are installed on the converter, which not only replaces people, but also digitizes and models the accumulated production experience, and can automatically identify the slag status using AI algorithms. "In the future, we will also introduce new technologies such as big data to continuously reduce product costs and improve quality and production stability. ”
Through the construction of smart mining, the crushing efficiency of Qidashan iron ore has been increased by 1741%, with an annual effect of more than 3,000 yuan. Guan Baoshan Company built a "black light factory", and the efficiency of manual labor was improved by 131%, labor productivity ranks first in the industry. Zhulan Iron Mine is the world's first unmanned metallurgical mining vehicle, shovel and drilling site operation and vehicle-shovel coordination, the efficiency of the single equipment of the drilling rig is increased by 10%, and the service life of the drill bit is increased by more than 1 time. Vanadium nitrogen alloy to build a 5G+ fully automated production line, vanadium yield increased by 014%, and the vanadium grade increased by 015%。The smelting time of a single converter in the general steelmaking plant has been shortened by 4 minutes, and the production capacity has been increased by more than 10%. Bayuquan Iron and Steel Base Green Smart Transparent Factory has reduced the hot-rolled scrap rate by 70%, the thick plate quality fluctuation rate by 20%, and the labor production efficiency has been improved by 1More than 5 times, it has become a new benchmark for intelligent manufacturing construction in the steel industry.
The results are gratifying and the exploration is amazing.
In addition to the intelligent transformation of the production system, Anshan Iron and Steel also explores the construction of a digital economy ecosystem of the steel industry, builds a smart chain service platform, integrates steel manufacturing end-to-client resources through deep integration of offline and online, and provides personalized, accurate, integrated and agile services for industrial chain enterprises. The order contract signed by the sales department of Anshan Iron and Steel is passed into the system, and the steelmaking plant thousands of miles away will be put into production immediately, the data system calculates the raw materials, and the intelligent platform controls the finished product off the production line.
In order to solve the pain points of the iron and steel industry from the long chain of production to circulation, many nodes, opaque information between the first end and the demand side, and the mismatch between the overcapacity of the manufacturing end and the personalized demand side, Anshan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. has comprehensively improved the collaborative optimization ability of the steel industry through the Delin Inland Port Smart Chain Service Platform, and built a digitally driven, online and offline integrated development, and a modern first-class chain system with full-process informatization, digitization and intelligence, with more than 40,000 active registered enterprises and a cumulative trading volume of 2 since its launch4.5 billion tons, with a total turnover of 931.1 billion yuan. Through the integration of more than 600 carriers and 1More than 40,000 vehicles, transportation areas throughout Northeast China, North China, East China and Central South and other regions, with an annual transportation volume of more than 70 million tons, to achieve transparent management of the whole process of transportation.
The digital operation of Anshan Iron and Steel requires not only high-level information engineers, but also smart and reliable machinery and equipment closely connected with the network, and this transformation process embodies the hard work and sweat of the group.
In a two-story building in the inconspicuous part of the main steelmaking plant, several young workers sit in front of the drawings, and you and I discuss the leakage problem of the steelmaking conveyor belt. In the process of steelmaking, a variety of alloys and raw materials should be added through the conveyor belt, and the raw materials should be put into the conveyor belt with strong impact force, which will cause the alloy addition component to be inaccurate after ejection, and it is easy to rub and misfire when stuck in the gap between the belt and the drum. "After many simulations and trials, our Innovation Studio designed a system that lifts and lowers the belt idlers directly below the discharge opening, eliminating production hazards. Liu Tie, a front-line worker at the General Steelmaking Plant, shared the group's innovative cases.
Workers are close to the equipment and close to the production line, and each worker can apply for the establishment of an innovation studio to solve problems such as leakage, gas leakage, and slag found in production and operation, and even the improvement of production equipment and the research and development of new production systems are inseparable from the wisdom of front-line workers. Nie Zhenyong, director of the Propaganda Department of the Party Committee of Anshan Iron and Steel Group, said that based on this, in addition to the major innovation of technical research and development personnel, Anshan Iron and Steel Group also pays attention to mobilizing the enthusiasm of grassroots employees for small reforms and explores the development of innovation for all employees.
Since the first employee innovation studio was launched in 2012, Anshan Iron and Steel Group has given birth to 367 worker innovation studios at all levels, and Anshan Iron and Steel has invested 12 million yuan in grassroots innovation support funds every year. In the staff innovation studios all over the factory, workers spontaneously gathered together after work to discuss how to improve the transmission system of the plant, reduce motor loss, and improve the purity ...... molten steel
Grassroots workers are working hard, and the top management of the enterprise has not relaxed. In the past five years, Anshan Iron and Steel has invested a total of 64500 million yuan, the implementation of 463 digital and intelligent projects, Qidashan smart mining, Guan Baoshan company beneficiation black light factory, 5G + smart steelmaking, Bayuquan coastal green smart transparent factory, steel industry integrated operation and manufacturing management system, steel industry Internet platform and other benchmark demonstrations have been completed32 achievements, including the application of big data in the whole process of iron and steel, the smart energy management and control platform, the remote perforation mining and unmanned transportation of Pangang's "5G+" mine, and the intelligent mining and dressing industrial Internet platform of Anshan Iron and Steel Mining, have been awarded the innovation demonstration of national ministries and commissions. Anshan Iron and Steel is on the list of the top 100 industrial blockchain enterprises in China in 2022, ranking among the best in the steel industry.
Under the empowerment of digitalization, a number of key technologies and products of Anshan Iron and Steel have made new breakthroughs, and the road to high-end industry has been steady. The world's first green hydrogen zero-carbon fluidized bed high-efficiency ironmaking technology demonstration project started construction, and a number of products such as extra-thick and high-strength nuclear power containment steel made the world premiere, and won the 13th World Steel Association Low-Carbon Production Outstanding Achievement Award, becoming the only Chinese enterprise to win the award. The output of Anshan Iron and Steel concentrate has hit the best level in history in recent years, and is expected to reach 53.25 million tons in 2023, an increase of 122%, continuing to maintain the first place in China.
The first step in the construction of steelmaking automation in Anshan Iron and Steel is basic automation, which controls the steelmaking process through an electric system, that is, 'one-key steelmaking', which has been fully realized. Zhai Baopeng said that the second step is to realize modeling, use the accumulated large amount of data, transform process ideas into mathematical models, computer software, and carry out various calculations in the cloud and on the server side, so as to continuously improve the intelligent level of the steelmaking process.
Ultimately, we hope that through the construction of digital Angang, we can help the group achieve the goal of 'world-class cost, world-class product and world-class scale'." Zhai Baopeng said. (Reporter Wang Hengtao, Wang Bingkun, Yuan Xiaokang).
Editor-in-charge: Yu Lu.