Difficulties faced by the steel industry

First, short process electric furnace crude steel output proportion is low. At present, iron and steel production technology is mainly divided into the long process of “blast-converter” smelting and the short process of “electric furnace” smelting. Long process is a process with high energy consumption and high pollutant emission. The short process mainly uses scrap steel as raw material, avoiding many links that may cause pollution. However, China’s steel process structure is dominated by the long process, and the ERW pipe output produced by the short process only accounts for about 10% of the total output, which is much lower than the 68% in the United States, the 40% in the European Union and the 24% in Japan.

The reason why the proportion of long process smelting is high is on the one hand because of the production cost, while the raw material cost of short process includes scrap cost, electricity cost, electrode cost and electric furnace maintenance cost, among which the electricity cost and electrode cost are high, and scrap cost is also rising. Long process smelting in our country has a set of complete industrial chain, compared can save cost. Another is the shortage of raw materials. The main raw material of the short process is steel scrap, our hot rolled steel pipe output has accounted for more than 50% of the world steel output, the vigorous demand promotes the international steel price rise, also makes the supply demand ratio of steel scrap decreases.

Second, deep steel environmental protection technology research and development is insufficient. Iron and steel environmental protection technology has developed rapidly and achieved remarkable results in the 13th Five-Year Plan period, but deep-seated process research and development still needs to be strengthened. In order to achieve ultra-low emission standards, flue gas treatment technology generally uses more mature wet method, semi-dry desulphurization process and other integrated technologies, but the use of these technologies will produce solid waste, or the existence of activated carbon secondary utilization technology gap, rising pre galvanized steel pipe price and other problems. For example, if activated carbon desulfurization integration technology is adopted, sinter cost of enterprises will increase at least 25 yuan/ton. Another example is reduction technology, including hydrogen metallurgy technology and electrolytic reduction technology. Although it can solve the carbon emission problem from the source, no breakthrough has been made. The depth of steel environmental protection technology of round steel pipe is not enough, on the one hand, because of the shortage of chemical industry, steel, energy and other related talents, especially to overcome high-end technical problems. On the other hand, research and development efforts need to be strengthened.