How do world-class steel bases save energy and increase efficiency through lubrication management?
As a pillar industry of the national economy, the steel industry has undergone earth-shaking changes after 40 years of reform and opening up. For more than 40 years, in order to catch up with the world's advanced level, workers in the Chinese steel industry have changed from learning and imitation to independent innovation, which has changed the situation that China's steel is heavily dependent on imports, and paved a broad road for high-quality development. As a leading enterprise in the domestic steel industry, Baosteel has been improving production efficiency, reducing energy consumption and emissions through technological innovation and management reforms for many years. While maintaining competitiveness in the industry, it has also set a benchmark for the industry.
As China's economy is transforming towards high-quality development, some experts pointed out that steel companies need to move towards high-efficiency technology, lean management, clean and low-carbon structure, resource recycling and standardization. In this context, Baosteel, which has been very well-developed in terms of "improving efficiency", gradually focused its attention on some refined areas, such as lubrication management.
Iron and steel enterprises adopt an automated and continuous production mode. The stable and reliable operation of equipment is extremely important. Large iron and steel enterprises such as Baosteel have large production scales, numerous production line units, and different operating conditions. However, complex and harsh operating conditions affect the equipment. Put forward demanding lubrication requirements, especially modern steel equipment with compact structure, high precision and high price. Good lubrication management can not only help extend equipment life, reduce the number of failures and abnormal downtime, reduce production maintenance and spare parts costs, but also help reduce Energy consumption and waste oil discharge to optimize resource utilization.
Extend the "high-altitude oil change" cycle, safety, environmental protection and energy saving!
There are 56 cooling water towers in Baosteel’s silicon steel plant. Because the fan gearbox is located on a 19-meter-high platform, it is difficult to sample oil products and cannot be inspected periodically. Baosteel has always been able to formulate an oil change interval based on experience, which is required every 7000 hours. Change the gearbox oil once. However, due to the special structure and location of the fan gearbox, each oil change must be operated manually at high altitude, which is quite inconvenient, time-consuming, and potentially safe. The frequent oil change demand and high oil change cost bother Baosteel.
Compared with ordinary mineral oil, synthetic lubricating oil has outstanding performance in equipment protection, oil life and trouble-free operation, which helps to increase productivity. As a gear and bearing lubricant with excellent performance, synthetic lubricants have excellent high temperature resistance and oxidation resistance, which can effectively reduce sludge deposits; even when used in extremely heavy-loaded gears and bearings subject to high shear, It can still withstand the action of mechanical shearing force, but the viscosity is almost not reduced, so it can meet the lubrication requirements of the two low-speed shaft bearings in the cooling water tower fan gearbox at the actual working temperature, causing the "high-altitude oil change" operation problem It has been greatly improved, and the oil change interval has been extended from the original 7,000 hours to 28,000 hours1, significantly reducing the number of oil changes and the safety hazards of engineers when changing oil.
Not only that, because the intramolecular friction is much smaller than that of mineral oil, synthetic lubricants also bring significant energy-saving effects to the factory, greatly reducing the energy consumption of the fan gearbox. Through the comparative energy consumption test under the control variable conditions on site, it is found that the use of synthetic lubricants can save power consumption by 0.9%2 compared with the original I mineral oil. In a year, 56 cooling water towers can reduce energy consumption by about 306 MWh ( MWh), the annual reduction of 228 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, coupled with the benefits of extended oil change intervals, only these 56 cooling towers can save Baosteel more than 210,000 yuan in maintenance costs 3 and reduce waste oil emissions by approximately 2,100 annually. Rise 4.
Choose the right lubricant, "Electric Tiger" will further save energy and reduce emissions!
A similar situation also occurred on the air compressor. Due to the large demand for compressed air, it is mainly used in various links such as pneumatic transmission, drying, metal cutting, equipment cooling, flame treatment, and factory instrument purging. Air compressors are widely used in Baosteel and have set up multiple air compressors. Station, the power consumption is very high. By optimizing the design and selection of the air compressor unit, improving the operation and management of the compressed air system pipe network, and the application of advanced production technology, Baosteel has realized the improvement of the energy utilization efficiency of the compressed air system in the main production areas. The production cost of the air compressor unit is reduced. Starting from details such as the upgrade of lubricants, it has really helped Baosteel achieve energy saving and consumption reduction in the air compressor system.
Take screw air compressor as an example. Its lubrication methods can be divided into oil-injected lubrication and oil-free lubrication. The main lubricating parts of oil-injected type are screw and bearing, while the main lubricating parts of oil-free type are synchronous gear and bearing. Whether it is a screw or a synchronous gear, the friction between the friction pairs is dominated by sliding friction. Compared with mineral oil, synthetic lubricating oil can more effectively reduce the friction on the surface of the component, thus producing a significant energy saving effect. When another type of centrifugal air compressor uses synthetic lubricating oil, it can also more effectively reduce the surface friction during gear meshing, so the energy saving effect is significant.
In addition, due to its superior oxidation resistance, the high temperature performance of synthetic lubricants is better than that of mineral oils, which can effectively help reduce the formation of carbon deposits, avoid lubrication failures and unplanned shutdowns, and help extend the oil change interval.