The “2021 Steel and Metallurgical Solid Waste Comprehensive Treatment and Utilization Technology Exchange Conference (Fifth)” sponsored by the Resource Comprehensive Utilization Branch of the China Industrial Cooperation Association was successfully held. Li Xinchuang was invited to participate in the conference and delivered a keynote report on “Accelerating the Efficient Utilization of Solid Waste Resources to Help the Iron and Steel Industry Reduce Carbon to Peak”.
1. The development stage and characteristics of China Steel
Steel is an important food for industry, steel is an important guarantee for construction, and steel is an important support for the economy! It should be objectively and correctly recognized that steel is an indispensable and important raw material for our country.
The development characteristics of my country’s steel industry can be summarized into five points: first, a strong steel industry supports the rapid development of the national economy; second, the steel industry is a typical technology-intensive industry; third, Chinese steel can make the world a better place; fourth , The iron and steel industry has become my country’s most globally competitive industry; fifth, China’s iron and steel industry will lead the development of the world’s iron and steel industry for a long time.
Low-carbon development is an important content, key manifestation and ultimate goal of solving the bottleneck of environmental, energy and resource constraints and promoting the high-quality development of the industry. At present, my country’s steel industry is evolving to a high-quality and low-carbon stage, and will reshape a new development pattern under the leadership of low-carbon.
2. China’s steel faces a new situation of low-carbon development
From the perspective of the economic environment, the global epidemic is still evolving, the external environment is becoming more complex and severe, and the economic recovery is still unstable and uneven. It is expected that my country’s economic growth will slow down, and the overall trend will be high and low. Since the beginning of this year, the performance of my country’s infrastructure investment has been lower than market expectations, the prices of bulk commodities have been generally high, the main economic indicators have been slightly weak, the level of manufacturing industry has fallen, production has slowed down, and market demand has fallen.
From the perspective of market supply and demand, the “look back” of capacity reduction and the reduction of crude steel output are two key tasks of my country’s steel industry in 2021. On the supply side, dual control of production capacity and output may become a normalized policy. With the reduction of crude steel output entering a substantive advancement stage and domestic demand falling, my country’s crude steel production will maintain a low operating trend. On the consumer side, taking into account factors such as the tightening policy control environment, weak real estate leading indicators, slowdown in the growth rate of the added value of the machinery industry, and weakening demand in the construction industry and manufacturing industry, it is expected that the national steel demand in 2021 will decline slightly compared with the previous year. , The demand for medium and long-term steel will slowly decline.
From the perspective of the low-carbon situation, based on the “3060” decision-making and deployment, my country’s carbon peak, carbon neutral “1+N” policy system has been introduced one after another, and low-carbon development has fully entered the substantive advancement stage. This year’s central economic work The meeting was more specific and pragmatic in the deployment of “dual carbon” work. As an important component of the carbon peaking initiative in the industrial sector, my country’s steel industry needs to implement the new development concept completely, accurately and comprehensively, do a solid job of “dual-carbon” work, and strive to be the first to achieve carbon peaks. At the same time, under the requirements of the dual energy consumption control policy, my country’s steel industry should pay more attention to source reduction, process control, and end-of-life management.
In summary, my country’s steel industry has both opportunities and challenges for low-carbon development. From the perspective of opportunities, low-carbon development will help my country’s steel industry achieve a higher level of dynamic balance between supply and demand, optimize process structure, promote a new round of technological revolution, promote intelligent upgrading, accelerate multi-industry coordination, and coordinate to promote environmental protection governance and deepen The product life cycle concept will help the industry’s low-carbon standardization work. From the perspective of challenges, the low-carbon transformation of my country’s steel industry is a arduous task. Not only is the time short and difficult, but it also faces challenges such as imperfect support systems, difficult structural carbon reduction, and immature breakthrough low-carbon technologies, but it is imperative. .
In short, low-carbon development depends on scientific and technological progress and scientific development. We should reduce carbon in development and develop in carbon reduction. For the low-carbon development of my country’s iron and steel industry, in particular, the carbon reduction of the blast furnace-to-converter long process, which accounts for up to 90%, should be accelerated.
3. Low-carbon leads the high-quality development of China’s steel industry
The low-carbon transformation of my country’s steel industry has to go through five stages: peaking, steady decline, substantial decline, deep decarbonization, and carbon neutralization. From the analysis of the main path of carbon peaking and carbon reduction, my country’s steel industry should focus on six aspects: first, promote green layout; second, save energy and improve energy efficiency; third, optimize energy use and process structure; fourth, build a circular economy industry The fifth is the application of breakthrough low-carbon technologies; the sixth is the strengthening of institutional construction and policy system support.
The high-quality and low-carbon transformation of my country’s steel industry should be based on the C+4E theoretical system, emphasizing on improving carbon productivity as the core, achieving energy conservation, improving economic efficiency, promoting coordinated environmental governance, and building an ecological steel industry chain. In addition, with the goal of multi-dimensional, systematic and scientific evaluation of the low-carbon development level of steel enterprises, the evaluation work of low-carbon development index of steel should be carried out, and the evaluation index system of low-carbon development index of steel should be constructed.
4. Suggestions for the development of efficient utilization of iron and steel solid waste resources
Carrying out the efficient use of iron and steel solid waste resources can reduce the consumption of ore resources. At the same time, building a circular economy industrial chain with building materials and other industries to replace the high-energy-consuming building materials processing links is an important task for my country’s iron and steel industry to achieve the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. One way.
The solid waste in the iron and steel industry has the characteristics of various types, complex composition, and large emissions. In recent years, my country’s iron and steel industry has actively carried out the construction of comprehensive resource utilization projects and implemented green transformation and upgrading. Although the total amount of industrial solid waste has increased, the comprehensive resource utilization index has still made progress while maintaining a relatively high level. Blast furnace slag and steel slag , The comprehensive utilization technology of iron-containing dust and mud has also achieved innovative development and popularization and application. However, at present, there are still a series of problems in the utilization of solid waste resources in my country’s steel industry, including: insufficient attention, management level needs to be improved; the base is unclear, data statistics need to be improved; facing technical bottlenecks, the technical level needs to be improved; there are industry barriers. The downstream coordinated development needs to be strengthened.
In order to promote the more efficient use of solid waste resources in my country’s iron and steel industry, three suggestions are put forward: one is to establish a sound standard system to promote the green development of the comprehensive utilization of solid waste in the iron and steel industry; the other is to promote technological innovation and green recycling of solid waste in the iron and steel industry Product promotion; The third is to develop a low-carbon development plan for the steel industry and corporate solid waste recycling economy industry.
