Baosteel Special Material realized integral supply of complete set supercritical boiler tubes after over ten years of exploratory difficulty tackling efforts. Supercritical boiler tubes made of over 600 tons of material S30432 and S31042 recently arrived at one 1.1 million kW power station in Xinjiang for equipment installation and testing. As first integral batched supply of supercritical boiler tubes domestically, it provided strong support for national energy strategy and energy safety, signifying China's capacity of total localized production of supercritical boiler tubes.
Development of technology in supercritical power generation started late in China. Despite of numerous breakthrough in material exploration and equipment manufacture, high-grade heat-proof steel in the set was basically imported, especially those high-temperature, high-pressure heat-proof steel tubes, used at the core, mostly applied and most difficult for manufacturing, i.e. supercritical boiler tubes, had never realized integral supply of complete sets.
To support national energy strategy, breaking up long-term monopoly of supercritical boiler tubes by foreign countries, in 2002, Baosteel Special Material formally established overall research on supercritical boiler tubes as a project. In 2006, Baosteel Group recognized it as directly managed project of the corporation to conduct deeper research, set up and optimize its production, quality assurance system and operation guidelines. Between 2010-2011, material S30432 and S31042 both passed specialist appraisals organized by China Standardization Committee on Boilers and Pressure Vessels. Its established enterprise production standard was put on record in the committee and granted permit. During the period, Baosteel Special Material collaborated extensively with scientific research institutes and enterprises on production, study and research of manufacturing technology, application techniques and strengthening mechanism. To tackle key problems, ensuring products meet with user requirements, Baosteel Special Material optimized metallurgical, forging and rolling techniques; achieved key breakthrough in grain size control; implemented whole process quality monitoring and control of tubes from punching (hot extrusion) to end product thermal treatment. In the past two years, Baosteel Special Material overcame problems of limited quantity and difficulty in organizing production, and had provided a few supercritical boiler tubes for maintenance of some domestic supercritical units, laying fine foundation for commercial supply of complete set this time.
Boiler enterprises have specially high standard for safety parameters which requires material suppliers of stable performance in reference. This initial integral supply of complete set of supercritical boiler tubes has thus extremely great implications.
