Innovation

Specifically, striping and coiling steel needs large amounts of hydrogen while the discharged hydrogen is mixed with water, dust, nitrogen, and oil pollution that cannot be reused directly. In the past years, the consumed hydrogen was released to the atmosphere that caused pollution and harmful gas to the environment and community. By contract, using the hood furnace to recover and reprocess surcharged gas can increase the purity of the hydrogen to 99.991% which means the surcharged gas can recontribute to the manufacturing process and eliminate polluted emission. Furthermore, Baotou Steel Group significantly reduces its expenses by ten million yuan annually through unlimited reuse of hydrogen. Hood furnace was a successful outcome of cooperation between Baotou Steel Group and a French company, EBNER in 2004 and many other steel manufacturing groups such as Jiuquan Steel and Anshan Steel are willing to purchase this high-tech machine.

Inspiration

The idea of hood furnace and hydrogen recovery was engaged by Baotou Steel Group’s mission leading to reduced costs and increased efficiency. About 18 years ago, an experiential director found the cost of hydrogen represented large percentage of the overall expenditure while company simply released the polluted hydrogen into atmosphere after production process. This negligence caused a series of problems including pollution and safety risk. Since hydrogen is a flammable and explosive gas, it may easily catch fire and when dispersed resulting in a potential hazard to workers’ safety. Also, the surcharged hydrogen from the production line was mixed with dust and nitrogen mainly causing air pollution and climate change. Motivated by company’s mission of cost reduction and purpose of pollution and safety risk elimination, a specialist research group was founded cooperating with a French company partner, BENER in 2001 aimed to deal with the consumed hydrogen. The engineers examined the nature of hydrogen and nitrogen under simulated condition of steel production and invented equipment based on the transformer principle combined with filter function of oil and dust. They reformed the original equipment to the ultimate hood furnace instead of replacing it to retain some of original function. “This was a clever choice to avoid unnecessary costs and technical difficulties and made the massive production of the new equipment become possible”, Yongmin Wang who is chief engineer said, “Our equipment suppliers just need to combine the new technique with the original equipment through remanufacturing rather than producing from the initial steps.”

Overall impact

The research and development of hood furnace was a key investment project for Baotou Steel Group in 2001 that spent 11million RMB in total according to Yongmin Wang. The realization of hydrogen recovery significantly cut production cost and contribute to environment and community improvement related to 7 SDGs (Goal 3, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13).

For Baotou Steel Group, hydrogen recovery technology cuts considerable production cost which is far more than the initial investment in short-term. For the long perspective, the development and implementation of the hood furnace advances the steel production line and improves the working environment safety for employers. “Our steel production process is becoming modernized and meeting the updated national standards of safety and environment management which is an important objective for our company as well”, said by Yongmin Wang. Additionally, the governors of Baotou Steel Group realize the Importance of innovation and increase the awareness of environment management (Goal 9, 12 and 13). Baotou Steel Group gets more business opportunity with many other steel companies who are interested in hood furnace and intend to purchase (Goal 8).

For the environment, less hydrogen consumed by overall steel production process and polluted gas emission is eliminated which remarkably improve the environment (Goal 7, 13 and 12). For the community, renewable energy use contributes to the nearby residents’ health and well-being and help to build a sustainable city (Goal 3 and 9).

Business benefit

1. Reduces the cost spent on hydrogen by approximately 10 million annually: the overall consumption of hydrogen is around 350-400 cubic meters per hour at price of 3 RMB per cubic meter. Hydrogen recovery helps Baotou Steel Group save this expense.
2. Eliminate the potential hazard in industries: Hydrogen is a flammable and explosive gas which easily catches fire, land even leads to serious accidents if simply dispersed to the atmosphere.
3. Advanced steel production line: the process of striping and coiling steel became more modernized through using renewable energy and high energy efficiency (Goal 9).
4. More business opportunities and cooperation with other companies: the function of hydrogen recovery makes the hood furnace widely used over different production lines and even different industries. As Baotou Steel Group holds the patent of hydrogen recovery technology, the other companies such as Jiuquan Steel Group and Anshan Steel Group need to purchase the hood furnace from Baotou Steel group (Goal 8).

Social and environmental benefit

1. Reduce air pollution: Recycling hydrogen can eliminate 80% polluted gas emission especially dust and nitrogen which are harmful to people’s health (Goal 3 and 7).
2. Contribute to sustainable community: As the largest business in the local community, actively use renewable energy and build responsible production make positive impact on establish a sustainable community (Goal 7, 11 and 12).

Interview

Yongmin Wang, Chief Engineer