At the Shougang Technology and Management Innovation Conference, the “R&D and innovation of high-quality automobile plate continuous casting process” project was awarded first prize by Shougang Science and Technology. This reflects Shougang’s capacity for independent innovation in the field of high-end automobile steel plate production and manufacturing, and provides strong support for the high-quality development of its main industry, steel.

Shougang aims at its customer base and high-end products. Its R&D and innovation in the field of automobile steel plates has already made excellent progress, with Shougang becoming the supplier of many middle and high-end users including BMW, Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen and the largest supplier of BMW Brilliance. However, factors like the low steel-making rate of automobile outer plates and the high additional output rate caused by product slag and inclusion defects have greatly limited Shougang’s ability to supply automobile steel plate products in batches to high-end joint venture automobile enterprises.

Shougang has successively strived to make technological breakthroughs in converter and refining processes. The cleanliness indicators of its automobile plate steel are world class. The results of previous research have shown that most of the defects in Shougang’s automobile steel plates are caused by the dislodging of the slag and nozzle plug in the continuous casting process. As a result, Shougang focused on research and innovation into its continuous casting technology to improve the surface defects of its automobile steel plates.

In 2018, as the Group approved the project, Shougang Research Institute of Technology, Jingtang Company and the joint stock company jointly formed the “R&D and innovation of high-quality automobile plate continuous casting process” team.

By the end of the year, they successfully overcame the adverse effects of this new technology on continuous casting, innovating and optimizing the mold flow field control slag coiling technology. This greatly reduced the probability of slag coiling and was a Chinese industry first.

After the implementation of the project, the surface quality of the automobile plates of Jingtang Company and the joint stock company has been greatly improved. Using the hot rolling process for Jingtang and Qiangang automobile steel plates, the additional output rate from steel-making decreased by 30% and 35% respectively; the additional output rate from steel-making using the cold rolling process has been reduced by 43% and 15% respectively; the direct economic benefit has reached 14.36 million yuan per year.