10 years is an integer passing through the span of time. From 2008 when he began to work in Shougang after the completion of his doctorate to 2018 when he won “Shougang Science and Technology Special Contribution Award”, Li Haibo, chief researcher of Shougang Institute of Technology, adhered to it for 10 years and always worked at the frontline of production and scientific research. and won a number of leading technological innovations in converter blowing, RH refining, clean steel production control and other aspects. He quenches the true qualities, casts the soul and strengthens the base for the iron and steel industry of Shougang with determination, toughness, persistence and reality.

Technological innovation contributes to high-quality development

In 2008, Li Haibo graduated from University of Science and Technology Beijing with a doctorate in iron and steel metallurgy. With the dream of innovation and entrepreneurship, he entered the thin plate institute of Shougang Research Institute of Technology. He was in charge of steelmaking technology development at the station of Qian’an Iron and Steel Company.

Iron and steel industry is an important basic industry in China, but there has been no new breakthrough in the consumption of resources and waste disposal. Oxygen converter steelmaking is currently the most important steelmaking process. Since its birth more than 60 years ago, two major problems have not been effectively solved: first, a large amount of consumption of lime, dolomite and other non-renewable resources; second, produce a large number of high alkalinity slag which is difficult to recycle. Converters of the domestic iron and steel companies produce more than 645 million tons of steel each year, which consumes more than 44 million tons of limestone and more than 10 million tons of dolomite, and produces about 62 million tons of slag, more than half of the slag is discharged as waste, occupying land resources and polluting the environment.

In order to reduce the consumption of lime, and light-burned dolomite and reduce slag discharge, Li Haibo has been in charge since 2011 to develop the new steelmaking technology of “residual slag + double slag” in converter with the research team.

The new process is based on the principle of “low temperature is conducive to dephosphorization” and, is divided into two stages, namely dephosphorization and decarbonization. After each furnace of steel is smelted, the high basicity slag is no longer poured out and discarded, but is left in the furnace for next use in the dephosphorization stage. After high efficiency dephosphorization, about 60% slag is poured out, then smelting in the decarburization stage continues, and the steel residue remains and enters the next furnace cycle; as the slag is reused, the consumption of lime and dolomite and slag discharge are greatly reduced.

The ingenious design of this new process has fundamentally changed the production mode in which the existing oxygen converter steelmaking process consumes large amounts of lime, dolomite resources and discharges slag. However, the research and development of this new process are very difficult. There are two biggest difficulties: first, the fluidity of slag is poor due to the high alkalinity slag remaining in the furnace, the deslagging is difficult, the amount of slag in the furnace accumulates one by one, and the new process is difficult to run continuously in multiple furnaces; second, the content of P2O5 in residue is high, and the dephosphorization is more difficult. If the dephosphorization is not efficient, the product quality will be seriously affected. At the beginning of the critical phase of nearly half a year, these two problems have been puzzling the team.

“The entrance to science is like the entrance to hell… There must be no hesitation. There must be no cowardice.” This is what Marx said, and Li Haibo strongly agrees with it: “People who do not engage in scientific research do not know what mental collapse is, and people who do not face problems do not know what painstaking efforts are.” He racked his brains, explored hard and found a breakthrough of the research in the process of pouring beer at a party. The slag foamed on the converter liquid steel is like the foam on beer. It is difficult to pour out directly and can be easily poured out only through adjustment. He timely adjusted, combined with the dynamic conditions, broke through the traditional technology concept, and solved two problems of the new process, namely being difficult with sufficient amount of deslagging and difficult dephosphorization. After that, through the experiment and accumulation of hundreds of furnaces, the new process finally made a great breakthrough, and in the actual production operation, the rapid solidification technology of liquid slag in the furnace combining with “physical cooling + chemical cooling” was first created. The major safety hidden danger that hot metal sprays when meeting residual slag of the new process is eliminated and the safe operation of the new process is ensured.

After the new steelmaking technology of “residual slag + double slag” was adopted, the consumption of converter steelmaking lime and light-burned dolomite and the discharge of slag were reduced by 45%, 35%, and 31%, respectively, and the annual average annual profit reached more than RMB 160 million; the project won 7 authorized invention patents and formed 15 enterprise technology secrets, obtaining the remarkable environmental protection and the economic efficiency.

Faced with the rapid development of science and technology in steel production, Li Haibo knows that only by vigorously promoting scientific and technological advancement and independent innovation can we seize the commanding heights and win the initiative to closely follow the pace of the times. For many years, in order to solve the problem of short life of bottom tuyere in domestic converter, most steel mills choose low bottom blowing stirring strength process, but because of low gas flow rate of bottom blowing single tuyere, tuyere is easy to be blocked; slag splashing is widely used to protect the converter in China, and the converter has a long life. Therefore, the bottom of the converter will rise “frequently”, and it is easy to cause the bottom tuyere to be blocked, partly or completely blocked, which seriously affects the effect of bottom blowing and stirring. Although some steel mills have studied and developed bottom blowing methods such as bottom blowing nozzle “reflow” and “slag mushroom head”, which are suitable for bottom blowing under the condition of slag splashing, it is still difficult to ensure the bottom blowing effect in the middle and late stages of converter life. The effect of bottom blowing directly affects the oxygen content at the end of converter blowing until the quality of steel is affected.

In order to reduce the oxygen content of the converter and improve the quality of the molten steel, Li Haibo organized the research team to carry out the research on the layout of the bottom air outlet and the optimization of the molten pool flow field. They broke the traditional model, put forward a new bottom blowing process, and closely cooperated with the technical personnel of on-site production to develop bottom tuyeres dynamic maintenance technology and others. Under the condition of more than 6,000 heats in service, the product of carbon content and oxygen content should be below 0.0020 on average and the oxygen content at the end of converter is reduced by 0.025%, achieving the stable control of the product of carbon content and oxygen content in the whole furnace service period. Due to only this one, the cost of steel per ton reduces by 8.0 yuan. At the same time, the erosion of the refractory material is significantly reduced and the dephosphorization efficiency of the converter is significantly improved. At present, the process has been fully promoted.

High-tech links high-end market

The height of the visual field determines the height of the cause. Li Haibo has always focused his eyes on the forefront of iron and steel science and technology. Over the past 10 years, he has repeatedly conquered difficult and challenging scientific research projects.

Pipeline steel is mainly used to process and manufacture oil and gas pipelines, which is related to the safe supply of oil and gas energy. As the representative of high-end hot continuous rolling types in recent years, the quality requirements of pipeline steels are extremely demanding. At the beginning of pipeline steel development, the uncontrollable non-metallic inclusions and sulfur content in the steel was a difficult problem puzzling the development of steel. The proportion of inclusions exceeding the standard was once up to 7%, and the sulfur content was also difficult to reach the required steel types, namely below 0.0012%.

Li Haibo, who has always been frugal, “improved his equipment” and bought an iPad at this time. On the bus heading for Qian’an Iron and Steel Company from Beijing, he used this iPad to read the electronic scientific research literature and analyze the data. As soon as there were new ideas or thoughts, he would record them. He thought it was a shame to waste such a long and centralized time, which could make up a full workday as it took him at least seven or eight hours a week to take buses. With the unremitting efforts of Li Haibo and the team members, they innovatively developed the technology integration of “pre-refining of converter tapping + LF high alkalinity and high Al2O3 slag refining + RH vacuum and efficient removal of inclusions”. The sulfur content in steel could be controlled to less than 0.0012%, and the proportion of class B inclusions in pipeline steel was reduced from about 7% to less than 0.5%, which is equivalent to the level of foreign advanced technology control. Gao Pan, a member of the pipeline steel development team and a researcher in the Thin Plate Research Institute, said to the reporter: “Now we have seen the achievements made by Li Haibo and our team, but we can’t see how many technical ideas and methods coming from his hard thinking on the bus there are behind the achievements.”

In the development of hydrogen sulfide corrosion resistant pipeline steel, Li Haibo put forward a new method for the first time to avoid the problem that the corrosion resistance of hydrogen sulfide caused by inclusion near the weld seam does not meet the requirement when pipeline steel is welded by HFW. At present, Shougang’s production and specifications of hydrogen sulfide corrosion resistant pipeline steel are both ranked first in the country; the pipeline steel produced by Shougang is used by the state for “West-to-East Gas Pipeline II” and Grade X80 pipeline steel is adopted, which has first passed the CNPC certification among domestic and foreign iron and steel supply enterprises. And Shougang becomes the biggest coil supplier of this project; Shougang pipeline steel has been exported to Europe and the Middle East because of its stable quality. Among them, the hydrogen sulfide corrosion resistance pipeline projects in Pakistan and other countries were specially designated to “adopt Shougang products”.

With the integration of the world economy, the Chinese auto market has become an international competition stage. The surface quality of domestic steel, especially steel for automobile panel, was difficult to meet the demanding requirements of high-end users for some time. In order to improve the production level of Shougang's auto panels, Li Haibo and team members tackle the problem. They adopt appropriate technologies to reduce carbon and increase oxygen, rapidly increase the vacuum extraction power and increase the gas flow rate after RH refining starts. At the same time, starting from the study of thermodynamic reaction mechanism, the RH refining process parameters were optimized, and gradually formed various key technologies, such as high efficiency decarbonization, slag strong modification, and RH efficient oxygen supply and the products reach the international advanced level. This achievement won the First Shougang Science and Technology Award in 2017 and Shougang becomes the supplier of Mercedes, BMW and other international well-known automobile manufacturers.

The talent team leads the innovation and development

The acquisition, landing and transformation of research and development results benefit from the collective wisdom of the talent team. The steelmaking and continuous casting process research and development team of the Institute of Technology a young team consisting of doctors and masters whose average age is 33 years. Li Haibo put he had borne firmly in mind a sentence one leader had said when he joined this team a decade ago: “Stay down, calm down, be indifferent to fame and wealth and fight for seconds.” In this belief, Li Haibo has always felt that time is not enough, and overtime has been common for him. He even has no conception of festivals and holidays. When others play and have a leisure time, he works; when his family members have slight illnesses and are in need of care, he still works. Li Haibo’s colleagues Yin Na and Wang Chang, researchers of the Thin Plate Research Institute said: “He has devoted himself to the cause.”

Scientific research is a kind of high-intensity mental work. It is a cooperation between team members and members specializing in different professional fields. Good psychological quality and stable and optimistic mood can make the leader devote himself more calmly to the research of science and technology, and rich team spirit is the most important condition for the leader to succeed in driving the team members. Speaking of team building, Li Haibo said that the key word is “tolerance”. “We welcome people who are good at teamwork as well as those ‘lone wolves’ who are good at fighting alone, as long as you can do it.”

After becoming the leader of the team, Li Haibo has led the team members to adhere to the “three combinations”-the combination of scientific and technological innovation and learning, the combination of personal innovation and team innovation, and the combination of personal pursuit and company goals. The “three combinations” reverse and change the narrow idea that steelmakers only care about steelmaking and steelmakers only know steelmaking, really realize the “organic combinations between steelmaking process and post-process as well as steelmaking process and product quality” and train the steelmaking team’s good work style of “taking into account the overall situation, having a sense of responsibility, and being brave to take on heavy responsibilities”. Now, the whole team combines scientific research, transformation of achievements and talent training by taking on research and development of major projects, on-site service, and other ways, forming the benign cycle mechanism of “building teams with projects, bringing up talents by teams and leading innovation with talents”.

For a decade of scientific research, Li Haibo has integrated his personal ideals into the iron and steel metallurgy scientific research cause and embarked on a path of forging ahead with his determination to make steel-making technology and dedicate himself to steelmaking technology. He was in charge of, participated in, and completed the research work on many major scientific and technological research projects. Many achievements reached the international advanced level, and he successively won the First Award and the Second Award of Metallurgical Science and Technology of the Chinese Society for Metals, the First Beijing Science and Technology Award and 11 Shougang Science and Technology Awards. Since he began to work, he has published more than 30 scientific and technological papers, obtained 42 authorized patents, and delivered several academic conferences as guest representatives at the national steelmaking and continuous casting conference. Li Haibo has won the honors and titles of “Shougang Labor Model”, “Capital Labor Medal”, “Beijing Labor Model”, “Beijing Excellent Young Engineer Model” and “Excellent Science and Technology Worker of China Iron and Steel Industry Association”.

According to the leadership of the Institute of Technology, Li Haibo was evaluated: “The discipline of learning is rigorous, and the practice is upheld, and the spirit of studying assiduously and constantly striving for perfection of the scientific research personnel is fully developed; he not only integrates himself into Shougang and fulfills the spirit of Shougang, but also brings out a steelmaking team that carries forward the spirit of Shougang, having made outstanding contributions to the progress and innovation of the steelmaking process of Shougang.”