The global steel industry is accelerating its transformation to high value-added fields. According to the World Steel Association, the demand for high-end special steel billets will exceed 120 million tons in 2025, of which ultra-pure materials such as silicon steel for new energy vehicle motors and deep-sea oil and gas pipeline steel account for more than 35%, pushing the smelting precision into the ppm (parts per million) control era.

Nano-level pure steelmaking

The vacuum degassing + electromagnetic stirring composite process is used to reduce the oxygen content of molten steel to below 8ppm, and the size of inclusions is controlled within 5μm. An international laboratory has verified that this technology increases the fatigue life of wind power bearing steel by 3.2 times, meeting the IEC 61400-5 standard's requirement for 20 years of zero-fault operation.

Intelligent dynamic solidification

Through laser contour scanning, the surface temperature field of the continuous casting billet is corrected in real time, and the proportion of equiaxed crystal area is stabilized at 45%-50%, and the carbon segregation index is ≤1.05. In the production of steel for hydrogen energy storage tanks, this technology achieves a hydrogen embrittlement resistance of 920MPa, breaking through the bottleneck of Type IV storage tank manufacturing.

Multi-dimensional rolling control

The thermomechanical rolling system integrates AI deformation prediction algorithm, which stabilizes the thickness tolerance of 12-meter-long steel billet at ±0.15mm, providing 0.18mm ultra-thin specification rolling capability for new energy vehicle motor silicon steel sheets, reducing iron loss by 23% compared with traditional processes.

China United Steel Group selects core enterprises from many steel producers for steel procurement to meet customers' diversified and complex needs for steel and provide one-stop procurement services. According to the current high-end markets such as the European Union, Japan and South Korea, the carbon footprint classification system for steel embryos has been established, requiring the carbon emission intensity of the entire product process to be ≤1.8tCO₂/ton. Leading companies have reduced carbon emissions in the smelting process by 62% through hydrogen-based direct reduction iron technology, while simultaneously improving the level of precise micro-alloying of rare earth elements.

We have reason to believe that from the third-generation nuclear power pressure vessels to the stainless steel brackets of Starlink satellites, high-precision steel billets are becoming the "genetic material" of high-end manufacturing. With the launch of digital twin certification of steel billets by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), this industrial revolution centered on microstructure control is reshaping the rules of competition for global industrial basic materials. China United Steel Group and many partners are looking forward to and witnessing this change.