An Jihe, the worker of Steel making Plant of Tianjin Tiantie Metallurgical Group Co., Ltd (hereinafter as Tiantie Group), was awarded the title of China's Top Ten Excellent Young Technician by Communist Youth League of China, Ministry of Labor and Social Security, PRC. Tiantie Group became excited when they heard this news. All workers praised him as a marvelous person and only one blue-collar worker wining this laurel in Tianjin City.
Tiantie Group is set in Tianjin, and its parent body is in Shexian County, Hebei Province. It just likes a bright phearl at the foot of Taihang Mountains. As a large state-owned enterprise, it undertook the projects of hot rolled coil, system reform before iron and cold-rolled thin plate engineering, which are listed as 20 key industrial projects of Tianjin City, and become the second venture opportunity for Tiantie Group. All of these results are gained through the continuous effort of excellent youths like An Jihe. Through interview for many days, the reporter knew An Jihe s course of struggle in the productive practice by this honor.
An intelligent young man
An Jihe has been engaged in making of converter for 15 years after he graduated in July 1992. Just like many other students, An Jihe was unfamiliar with steel making production process of the converter. Although he learned professional knowledge of steel making, he still didn t know what to de when facing this buster of converter. However, he remembered what his father had told him, Try your best to do everything!
An Jihe began to practice at the first production line wearing the while flame-retardant clothes. He never retreated from steel making in spite of dirty, hard, tired and hot as well as fatalness. He worked very hard and not felt ashamed to ask for advice from his master. He did everything he could do for his master.
His master was deeply moved by his modesty and curiousness. He taught An Jihe all he knew and established profound friendship with him. One rainy night, other schoolmates did not want to do night work any more, but An Jihe still insisted on working and other people went do duty driven by him. Everything comes to him who waits.
An Jihe mastered operative knowledge of the converter steel making in two years of practice, which has paid a foundation for him to become a qualified furnace superintendent.
Practice makes perfect
There are both happiness of success and frustration on the journey of the growth. An Jihe experienced a lot for this.
During the process of steel making, the short furnace life of the converter has been one of major problems puzzling the production. Although An Jihe and his colleagues adopted many operative measures, it cannot reach the ideal status. In 1997, the Steel making Plant began to introduce slag splashing for furnace maintenance (after converter blowing, blowing nitrogen gas jet at high speed by oxygen lance to strike partial high-melting slag left in the weld pool and make the slag attached to the surface of converter lining to form slag protective layer so as to protect the converter) technology.
Everyone cannot master the key points of this technology, so the production was in the dock.
However, An Jihe was eager to learn this new technology very much. He always squatted down by the converter, broke off the hot and thermal slag again and again wearing gloves and wanted to search answer from it. He consulted a lot of data and made slag according to the knowledge he learned form the data and sent the sampled slag to the laboratory to make data comparison in order to find differences.
Easier said than done. Through many days research and suffering the roast of high-temperature molten steel, An Jihe found that the main reason affecting the converter was due to improper handling that caused slag basicity was too low. According to his own discovery, An Jihe changed the handing method bravely and created the operation method of low-high-low lance height of slag splashing.
This method was popularized through the whole plant after gaining the consent of leaders, through which the furnace life reached over twenty thousand furnaces. Therefore, the problem puzzling the production was solved.
Truth comes from practice. After getting success in slag splashing for furnace maintenance technology, An Jihe believes in this more firmly. He believes that only by hard working and leaning from experience, can one get genuine talent and gain the answer behind the problem.
Overcoming the difficult problems continuously
The supply shortage of steel raw materials has restricted the production task of the steel severely for some time. In order to ensure the annual output of the company, the Steel-making Plant decided to increase the scrap-adding amount of the converter, which is to increase the output from 8 to 9 tons to 11 and 12 tons. Therefore, the output can be increase of 400 tons per day.
The new task is new challenge. Facing the frequent accidents of sputter, lance sticking, blanking tube sticking, burning lances and other accidents, An Jihe launched into new subjects just like overcoming the problem of slag splashing for furnace maintenance technology.
Through many days of searching and practice, An Jihe found the methods to remove those accidents. He embarked on adjustment feeding time of converting lance position and slag forming to lower down the position of converting lance in order to improve the converter molten pool temperature, stabilize process slag melting control, prolong the material bonding time of the slag material. The lance position is elevated to reduce the splash of the converter. Therefore, the energy consume was lowed down and the output was increased. Furthermore, the quality was not affected.
The excellent technical quality and innovative ability make An jihe win the trust and support of other workers.
Break through oneself
An Jihe taught himself some relevant technical books for several years, such as Converter Lining Protection Technology by Slag Splashing, Metallography, Oxygen Top Blown Technology and Equipment, Steel-making Science, Secondary Seel-making Processes, Theory and Practice of Secondary Steel-making Processes, Knowledge Quiz of Steel-making.
In the practice, he took part in the development and production of all kinds of steel and accumulated a lot of production experience. He has many notebooks recording the data of the production. As a technician, the accumulation of data is very important. He always said that the individual s strength was insignificant and he just set an example for others.
Besides work and study, he also trained many furnace superintendents and furnace attendants. Many technical superstar and technicians has emerged in the steel-making plant driven by him. His apprentices have occupied the important production post and got excellent achievements.
Everyone said that An Jihe was a successful man. When somebody asked the secret of his success, his answer was very simply: first, asking more; second, remember more; third, reading more; fourth, doing more. Relying on these four more , An Jihe has created one and another miracles: the index of low carbon steel reached 92%, the qualified rate of tundish liquid steel temperature reached 90%, no waste product and the qualified rate of liquid steel reached 99.
99%. The converter utilization coefficient created by him and his colleagues reached 82.5% in 2006. This figure ranked the first place nationwide and it was hard to exceed by insiders.
The biggest happy of our life is the return after hard working. An Jihe has got many honors for many years. He was awarded many honor titles, such as technical model of the company, young job experts, industrial system technical model of Tianjin City and National Technical Master. However, he attributed these honors to his company.
