A few days ago, the aludirome heating wires independently researched and developed by Beijing Shougang Gitane New Materials Co., Ltd. were successfully applied to the Zhangjiakou Mountain News Center of the Olympic Winter Games and its surrounding clean heating facilities, marking that Shougang’s “Ganghua”-branded high-quality electric heat energy storage materials are helping to promote the “Green Winter Olympic Games”.

As a non-competition venue for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, the Zhangjiakou Mountain News Center was rebuilt on the basis of the existing venues of Genting Grand Hotel. With a total floor area of about 10,000 m2 over a construction area of about 4,000 m2, it mainly includes the press conference hall, press workshop, news agency room, venue service function room and so on. In order to supply clean heat to the Zhangjiakou Mountain News Center, Genting Grand Hotel and surrounding regions, realize the efficient utilization of local wind power as a renewable energy source and govern and improve environmental pollution, a coal-to-electricity project has been implemented at Erdaogou Heat Source Plant in Chongli District, Zhangjiakou City. This is one of 76 key projects of the Winter Olympics, and all participating parties must go all out; among them, Shenyang Shijie Technology Co., Ltd. won the bidding to provide 110 kV solid electrical heating energy storage equipment. This is a high-power new-type heat source which makes full use of valley time price electricity and abandoned wind power during the night to adopt solid heat storage. With the capacity to continuously supply heat for 24 hours in large-scale and super-large-scale urban regions, it can completely replace coal-fired, gas-fired and oil-fired boilers, and does not produce any exhaust gas, wastewater or waste residue in its use procedures, thereby achieving zero CO2 emissions and promoting energy saving and environmental protection.

For this “high-voltage-grade high-power solid heat storage electric boiler”, the quality requirements are extremely high for the core material of the electric heating wire: it needs no transformer but works directly at a voltage level of 110kV in order to achieve high-power electricity-heat conversion and high-capacity heat storage. Li Gang, Party Committee Secretary, President and General Manager of the Shougang Gitane Corporation, told the reporter that Gitane has established a long-term stable cooperation relationship with Shenyang Shijie by virtue of its continuous independent R&D and technical innovation advantages in core energy storage boiler materials and electricity-heat conversion materials, and Gitane has been a reliable supplier for the R&D of new materials of Shenyang Shijie for more than ten years. Therefore, since winning the bidding for the coal-to-electricity project of Erdaogou Heat Source Plant, a supporting project of the Winter Olympics, in July 2020, Shijie and Gitane have carried out communication and coordination, and jointly provided high-standard and high-quality services for excellent Winter Olympics projects. As a leader of Shijie said, “Quality is guaranteed when cooperating with Shougang Gitane!” 

From technology R&D to the production process, the Gitane Corporation’s product quality control starts at the source. Synchronously with the Shijie Corporation’s launch of the project design scheme, Gitane rapidly organized and carried out technological breakthroughs and production preparation for the electric heating wire in such aspects as specifications, power, grade, model selection and so on.

Yang Qingsong, Director of Gitane’s Technology Development Department, led the R&D team to overcome many technical and technological problems such as fine dimensional accuracy, narrow range of chemical components, high requirements of surface load, quality consistency of production batches, etc., and successfully developed aludirome heating wires that meet the requirements of engineering projects and large energy storage boilers. Immediately, production and supply were organized in batches under the close cooperation of the Company’s Marketing Department, Quality Department, Wire Drawing Operation Area, Smelting and Rolling Operation Area, and other units. Before the heating season in November 2020, more than 200 tons of Shougang’s “Ganghua”-branded aludirome heating wire products, independently researched, developed and produced by Gitane, were applied to the 110 kV solid electric regenerative furnace equipment in the coal-to-power project of Erdaogou Heat Source Plant in Chongli District, Zhangjiakou City, achieving sales revenue of more than RMB 6 million.

In the interview, we learned that this large solid electric heating energy storage furnace is different from the general household vertical rectangular heating equipment. It is as large as a several-storey residential building, and it can be even larger as needed. With such an enormous spatial volume, it looks just a giant “Rubik’s Cube”. The external facade is tiled with a layer of flat red heat storage/heat-resistant bricks, and the inside is tiled with alternating horizontal and vertical layers of heat-resistant bricks. Between the crevices of each heat-resistant brick, the core component material is buried: electric heating wires coiled like springs which collect heat and reduce space usage. The honeycomb space with heat-resistant bricks in alternating horizontal and vertical layers is just the “home” of the spring-shaped heating wires. The orderly and even distribution of the heat-resistant bricks and electric heating wires conducts heat to every corner of “Rubik’s Cube”, thereby achieving efficient energy storage.

According to Tao Ke, Deputy General Manager of the Gitane Corporation, the most important characteristic of the supply task of the electric heating wires is to ensure that the large solid electric heat energy storage furnace can achieve high safety and reliability in direct connection with a 110 kV high-voltage power line. Under the conditions of 110 kV high voltage, if the large energy storage equipment does not deliver sufficient resistance performance, the huge current would burn up all the conductive circuits in an instant. Gitane’s independently researched, developed and produced heating wire products with a diameter of only 3.2 mm broke through the high-power technical bottleneck in the process of electricity-heat conversion and thermal energy storage. Its core technology content is its high resistance: the material itself can withstand both high current load and high temperature of over 1,000 thousand degrees during energy conversion. Under high pressure conditions, it can safely and effectively convert electric energy into heat energy. To sum up, first, it can be directly connected with high voltage and large current and still deliver safe performance; second, it can efficiently convert electric energy to realize clean heating; and third, it can use the difference between peak and valley time electricity prices to store and release energy, and improve the balanced regulation and control ability of the local power grid.

Tao Ke further explained that the number of layers of heat-resistant bricks depends on the total heat supply demand, so the “Rubik's Cube” can be adapted and changed in size according to local conditions and needs. Each of the four 50,000 kW large solid electric storage furnaces supplied by Gitane is as big as a three-storey residential building and utilizes a total of 200 tons of electric heating wires. If they were completely straightened, they would stretch out for around 1,750 kilometers. Shijie’s technicians fully affirmed Gitane’s products, telling us, “These long heating wires can ensure the stability of the resistance value. What we use is the technical content of Shougang’s brand.”

With the help of Shougang’s products, the “Rubik's Cube” runs steadily. During valley time electricity price periods, four large solid electric heat storage furnaces will fully store heat energy and continuously deliver it to the Zhangjiakou Mountain News Center, Genting Grand Hotel and thousands of households in the surrounding regions through heating pipes, providing clean heating services in the winter for 1.5 million m2 of residential buildings. This time, the Gitane Corporation has contributed to the “Green Winter Olympics”, assisted the local consumption and clean heating of wind power as a renewable energy in Zhangjiakou City, and made a considerable development achievement for “Olympic Quality”.

As one of the first enterprises to research and develop electric heat energy storage materials domestically, after years of accumulation and innovation, the Gitane Corporation has become stable in its position as a “leading” material supplier in the domestic clean energy heating industry by virtue of its scientific research strength, efficient production capacity, excellent product quality and ability to rapidly respond to market demands. Shougang’s “Ganghua”-branded heating wire and resistance wire products have also been developed into a famous brand with the greatest influence in the electric heat energy storage market domestically. Following the Zhangjiakou Winter Olympics Supporting Clean Heating Project, Gitane is currently supplying electric heating energy storage furnaces to be newly built in North China and Northeast China out of season. The company’s leaders said that they will stick to the “deep cultivation” of the domestic high-power electric heating energy storage market and strive to make further contributions to promoting coal reduction, saving energy, reducing emissions and increasing the clean energy supply.