The world's iron and steel industry has experienced several revolutions. Around 1865, the air side blowing converter steelmaking method and flat furnace steelmaking method appeared in Britain, and then the flat furnace replaced the side blowing converter. In order to strengthen the flat furnace smelting, then adopt the oxygen blowing operation. After Austria invented the oxygen top-blown converter steelmaking method (LD method) in 1952, the world steel industry has entered a period of rapid development. With the great leap of iron and steel industry, oxygen generator is developing towards large scale rapidly, and oxygen and steel are closely connected.
After Austria, the United States is the first country to adopt oxygen top-blown converter in the world. Japan has introduced this technology and developed it vigorously since 1957. Within only ten years, the steel production has soared from 10 million tons to 0.1 billion tons. Its development speed is so fast, and the proportion of oxygen and steel is so large, was symmetrical world first. During this period, the production of oxygen also increased rapidly. If the total output of oxygen was 100 in 1951, it would reach 637 in 1967, which increased 6.4 times in ten years and reached 1998 in 1973, it has increased 20 times in 16 years. Japan's steel production exceeded 100 million tons in 1973. America will produce 0.106 billion tons of steel and consume 6.523 billion cubic meters of oxygen by 1978. The steel sector has always been the largest industrial user in the oxygen industry, and the oxygen consumption of steel production accounts for 2/3 of the total oxygen production.
The steel production of our country broke through 100 million tons in 1996, and in recent years, the steel production of our country continued to rise. Some people predicted that the steel production of 2003 would exceed 210 million tons. The growth of steel production has driven the growth of gas industry. In 2002, the application fields of large and medium-sized air separation equipment set by gas separation equipment industry are mainly steel, accounting for 83.29%. 1988~In 2000, China's air separation plant industry produced 300 sets of large and medium-sized air separation plant, converted into a total capacity of 1305815 m3/H, among which the market shares of metallurgy (steel and nonferrous) industry in the number of air separation equipment and oxygen generation capacity reach 60.59% and 64.4% respectively.
The traditional process of iron and steel production is long process, which is sintering, coking, ironmaking → steelmaking → steel rolling. Later, it develops short process, which is electric furnace → continuous casting → continuous rolling, and the oxygen consumption of electric furnace increases rapidly; in addition, with the improvement of iron and steel quality and the development of new technology, the adoption of technologies such as refining outside the furnace, compound blowing at the top and bottom, slag-splashing furnace protection, not only the rapid increase of oxygen consumption, and the amount of nitrogen and argon also increased rapidly. Oxygen-rich blast of blast furnace, sealing of Top of blast furnace, coal dust blowing and so on are also the major customers who use oxygen and nitrogen. Melting reduction ironmaking (corex) technology uses a large amount of oxygen, and oxygen consumption is 500~700m302/T iron, devices using this technology have been completed and put into operation in South Africa, South Korea and other places.
Foreign iron and steel plants usually allocate 10,000 m per million tons of steel without considering the condition that the blast furnace is rich in oxygen.3/H oxygen generation capacity, namely (million m3/H02)/Million tons of steel ratio is 1. In 1999, the matching scale statistics of oxygen generator of 10 iron and steel enterprises in China (million m3/H02)/The average ratio of million tons of steel is 1.33.
The popular saying of "oxygen has steel", although it is not comprehensive and accurate enough, it vividly illustrates the close relationship between steel and oxygen from one side.
