Baowu invests dozens of people for an alloy material, but only produces a few tons per year, why should this "loss-making" business be done?

A steel industry newspaper once made a mistake that was taken for granted.

The newspaper's editorial board received an article reporting that China Baowu produced 1.5 tons of a high-temperature alloy material per year. The editor thought: 1.5 tons per year? How can it be?

China Baowu is a "100 million tons of steel enterprises" (annual output of more than 100 million tons of steel), no matter which variety of steel products, how can the annual output be in units of ten thousand, how can it be 1.5 tons? There must have been a missing word "ten thousand". So the editor, with common sense, added "ten thousand" after 1.5 and changed it to 15,000 tons. That's how the error was made.

In fact, the statement in the original draft - the annual output of 1.5 tons is accurate. This is a kind of superalloy material developed by Baowu Special Metallurgy Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Baowu Special Metallurgy) under China Baowu, which is very specific - the engine hot end components of the Long March series carrier rockets, which bear the high temperature of nearly 3,000 degrees Celsius sprayed by the rocket engine, but the body is flowing with ultra-low temperature fuel of more than minus 100 degrees Celsius, and the temperature difference of thousands of degrees Celsius tests the ability of the material.

Although the amount of this material is small, the use is very large. Superalloy is known as the jewel material in the industrial crown, and the mainland has been in a long-term blank in the production and manufacturing technology of small-diameter thin-walled superalloy pipe products and manufacturing technologies, and is strictly sealed by foreign countries. After more than ten years of research and development, the Baowu team has achieved a breakthrough of zero in this high-temperature alloy material, providing a guarantee for the mainland aerospace industry. In order to produce this 1.5-ton superalloy, Baowu is equipped with a team of dozens of people. In the steel industry, such a ratio is almost unimaginable.

This "small and beautiful" superalloy material shows a mysterious corner of the continental steel industry: "high-precision and cutting-edge" products developed to serve the national strategy. Walking into the exhibition hall of Baowu Special Metallurgy, you can almost get an overview of half of the history of China's major project development. Long March carrier rockets, aero engines, west-to-east gas transmission, nuclear power plants, magnetic levitation, large aircraft... All of them left the imprint of Baowu.

As the only special metallurgical materialS R&D and manufacturing enterprise under China Baowu, Baowu Special Metallurgical undertakes the mission of national special metallurgical materials research and development and supply assurance on behalf of China Baowu. Last year, Baowu's high-purity triple smelting alloy bar preparation process passed the technical review of China Aviation Development, providing a guarantee for the realization of the independent and controllable key materials of mainland aero engines. Successfully developed a new heat-resistant steel material that can be used for 630 degrees Celsius supercritical thermal power units - the world's first, promoting the transformation of mainland thermal power materials from follow-up to leading. Baowu's products are all over the major projects that the public is familiar with.

On December 20 last year, CCTV's "News Network" broadcast a quick news: the world's first fourth-generation high-temperature gas-cooled reactor nuclear power plant in Weihai, Shandong Province, was connected to the grid to generate electricity.

Thousands of miles away in Baoshan, Shanghai, Baowu employee Ou Xinzhe has been waiting for this news for many years. Ou Xinzhe, a 41-year-old senior engineer at Baowu, has participated in the development of nickel-based alloy materials for key components of fourth-generation nuclear power plants.

On the day the nuclear power plant was connected to the grid to generate electricity, he specially came to the company's inspection room. Here stand dozens of experimental machines shaped like small iron barrels. One of the experimental machines hung samples of his nickel-based alloys. The sample size is similar to that of an adult index finger, with threads at both ends. It is continuously subjected to external stretching and high temperature roasting at 750 degrees Celsius in the experimental machine.

Ou Xinzhe opened the computer connected to the experimental machine, the mouse hovered in the "hanging sample duration" column of sample No. 39, and the reading 56929 jumped out.

56,929 hours ago, he sent this alloy sample for the fourth generation of nuclear islands to this testing room for pressure and heat testing. The threshold for the duration of the inspection is 1000 hours: only if you insist on more than 1000 hours continuously, you will be qualified. Now, 56,929 hours have passed, and the samples are still hanging intact in the inspection environment.

Ou Xinzhe took over the development of this nickel-based alloy 10 years ago. At that time, he was in his early 30s and was still known as XiaoOu by his colleagues. Ten years of grinding a sword, when the news of the fourth generation of nuclear power in Weihai grid-connected power generation came, XiaoOu was already middle-aged. Today, fourth-generation nuclear energy technology is only mastered by a few countries such as China.

What is the difficulty of material development? Zhao Xin, chief engineer of Baowu Special Metallurgy, explained: "The difficulty is not in the composition of the material, the composition comes out with a dozen spectra. The difficulty is how to achieve stable quality. "To make a less rigorous analogy, like a noodle, it is difficult to sum the noodles evenly and without impurities every time."

The dough — the nickel-based alloy needed for the fourth generation of nuclear islands — was made and settled by Ou Xinzhe and his colleagues from 2012 until 2015. Each performance metric is a level. He couldn't remember how many times he had failed in those three years. Each time, a sample is made — sent to the testing room — and tested for 1,000 hours. Sometimes, in two or three hundred hours, the sample is broken. They optimized the chemical elements, improved the processing process, and tried again. Less than 1000 hours, broken again, and again...

During the 1,000 hours of the sample, he went to the inspection room every few dozen hours to see it. He said: "Once, it was 100 hours away, broken, or unqualified. What to do? You have to start all over again. "This kind of process takes two months or more each time. This was repeated for more than three years, until 2015, when nickel-based alloy samples finally crossed the 1,000-hour threshold. Standards!

The breakthrough of the Baowu people is of great significance to the country. The first is to reduce the cost of major projects. After Baowu developed the third generation of nuclear power U-shaped heat transfer tubes, the price of similar imported products dropped from 3 million yuan per ton to 600,000 to 700,000 yuan, saving hundreds of millions of yuan by building a nuclear power plant. Similarly, after localization, the nickel-based alloy used for oil and gas field mining under harsh geological conditions has dropped from 800,000 yuan per ton to 200,000 yuan.

More importantly, Baowu's "high-precision and cutting-edge" products have played an irreplaceable role in ensuring energy security and serving the national strategy.

Zhao Xin said: "Material research and development is like cultivating children, we must have both wisdom and patience. "Advances in materials science take time to accumulate. For example, nuclear power plants need to be in service for 60 years, how will the material properties change in 60 years? We don't have that number yet. Some key materials in Japanese thermal power units have been hung in the inspection room for 30 years. In this sense, data is more "valuable" than material.

At this moment, in the inspection room of Baowu Special Metallurgy, Ou Xinzhe's nickel-based alloy samples have been hung for nearly 60,000 hours. Inspections continue, and data on the performance of materials is increasing over time. These data will be a wealth that is difficult to buy in the field of continental materials.

Ou Xinzhe said: "As long as the samples continue, I hope to hang on forever." ”