Rolling Technology with Reducing Resources in China

In recent years, steel production has increased rapidly in China, to approximately 489 Mt in 2007. However, any further growth in production presents problems related to the shortage of energy and resources, environmental pollution, and the high cost of raw materials. In view of this, the government of China has changed its steel policy from tax return for export of steel products to adding extra tax on it. The steel companies in China are now forced to devote more attention to reducing the cost of steel production. This articleputs forward idea of rolling steel with declining resources. It includes: 1) Flexible Rolling Technology (FRT) based on the technology of online control of microstructure and properties, which will facilitate using a slab with the same chemical composition to produce the steel products of different properties by means of using different rolling and cooling parameters; 2) new generation cooling system and new generation Thermo-Mechanical Control Processing (TMCP), including High Rate Cooling (HRC) and Cooling Path Control (CPC) for plate mill, hot strip mill, and bar mill; 3) development of high performance steel products with low cost, such as super steel, fine grained steel, and Advanced High Strength Steel (AHSS), such as Dual Phase (DP) and TRIP steels with simple chemical composition. The key points are to save energy and reduce resource consumption (especially the consumption of microalloying elements), aiming at reducing manufacturing cost and helping to protect and conserve the environment, which is considered to be the best way to ensure sustainable development of steel rolling industry.