General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out that self-reliance in science and technology has become a fundamental capability for China's survival and development. We need to speed up the building of a strong country in science and technology, achieve high-level self-reliance and self-improvement in science and technology, and resolutely win the battle against key and core technologies.Iron and steel is the most important basic raw material for industrial society. It has played an irreplaceable role in supporting China's defense industry, equipment manufacturing, infrastructure construction and people's livelihood, and strongly promoted the process of industrialization and modernization in China.Sustained and stable access to high quality steel products, as well as the grasp of oil, food and other strategic resources has the same important status.

After decades of development, China's iron and steel industry has made great progress, but there are still problems in high-end iron and steel materials and key technology innovation.From the development demand and the development trend of the world steel industry, green and intelligent technology has become the focus of a new round of steel field competition.China's iron and steel materials and industry is in urgent need of three peaks, to achieve "three" : the first is the high-end special materials there is "jam neck" problem, high quality iron and steel materials there is a stability problem, "high-quality products" demand is strong.Second, iron and steel material production is faced with resource and energy constraints, and iron ore has a large dependence on foreign countries. Carbon peak and carbon neutrality have become an important national strategy, and the steel industry is under great pressure.It is more and more urgent to promote the safe, reliable and stable supply of iron ore resources in China and realize the "green process" of the whole process.Third, the stability of production equipment and process, product uniformity, consistency is poor, industry digitalization, intelligent enabling steel materials and process technology innovation and development is imperative, intelligent equipment is imminent.

Steel is an application-oriented multi-process manufacturing industry.Steel technology free-standing self-improvement, is to face the world technological frontier, the main battleground of the national economy and the national major strategic needs, geared to the needs of the people's life and health, focus on high-quality steel materials and the key technology of autonomous efficient supply and the greening of industry transformation and upgrading, digital integration of the whole process innovation, breakthrough high-end core key technology and special steel products preparation,Research and development of environmentally friendly green production process, and with digital and intelligent technology to enable steel materials and process technology innovation, to ensure China's national defense construction and people's livelihood needs of high-end high quality steel materials independent supply and industrial safety development.Specifically speaking, the innovation and development of China's steel industry should focus on the following strategic tasks:

Task one:

Breakthrough the "bottleneck" core process and material technology, improve the independent support capacity of high-end special steel materials used in major projects and national defense construction.High quality special steel is an important and indispensable to protect the safety of national industrialization and the national defense foundation materials, special steel in China about 70 million tons of production capacity, but the product is not high, excess capacity, national defense war industry, major equipment and high-end special steel materials required for the project there are still some totally dependent on imports, "their" problems and risks.At the same time, high-grade iron and steel materials in Marine engineering, energy, power, transportation, equipment manufacturing and other key fields are also facing bottlenecks such as low key technical indicators, key core technologies to be broken through, and unstable quality.It is the primary strategic task in the field of iron and steel materials to innovate the theory of ultra-high strength and toughness iron and steel materials, make breakthroughs in key core technologies, and ensure the independent guarantee of iron and steel materials used in major projects and high-end equipment.

Task 2:

We will make innovations in green production processes, break through restrictions on resources and energy, and solve environmental problems such as emissions and pollution.At present, China's iron and steel material industry foreign dependence on iron ore has been sustained for many years to more than 85%, has become a major hidden danger of economic safety operation.In fact our country and the rights and interests of mining poor miscellaneous iron ore reserves of 30 billion tons, but poor resources endowment, unable to effectively utilize the conventional processing technology, and similar to the poor in the world of mixed up to hundreds of billions of tons of iron ore reserves, green innovation efficient sorting method, implement lean miscellaneous iron ore resource utilization, industry resources security is of great significance for China's iron and steel materials.At the same time, the iron and steel material industry is the key field to achieve emission reduction and carbon neutral national strategy, and the process green is imperative.Research and development of energy efficient utilization, low-carbon metallurgy, steel and chemical joint production and other low-carbon cutting-edge technologies, independent innovation of clean smelting, thin strip casting and rolling, headless rolling and other green short process production processes, to achieve green transformation and upgrading, is an important support for the implementation of the national strategy of carbon peak, carbon neutral.

Task three:

Digital and intelligent technologies enable the development and innovation of steel materials and processes, promote the construction of "digital steel" and support the transformation and upgrading of the steel industry.Accelerating the construction of "Digital China" and implementing data-driven innovative development has become an important national strategy.The uncertainty of steel production and manufacturing process is extremely strong, and the materials in the process are basically "black boxes" and the cross coupling between processes, which limits the further improvement of product quality and production stability.At the same time, material design is mostly carried out through repeated experiments and simulation based on "trial and error", and the production process and product enslapment process fail to form information sharing and collaboration.Promote the digitization and intelligentization of manufacturing process and the integrated application of big data, build the steel material innovation infrastructure platform, and use big data, machine learning and other methods to reveal the complex relationship between material composition, process and organizational performance, so as to accelerate the innovation of material and process.It is urgent to study the digital twin model of the production process, develop the information physical system of the whole production process and the whole life cycle of the product, implement the digital transformation, improve the product quality, eliminate product defects, stabilize the production process, reduce the production cost and improve the production efficiency.

For many years, China has ranked first in the world's steel production, and China's steel industry has stood at the forefront of the world.The historical responsibility of innovation, especially independent innovation, has been unshirkable to fall on the Chinese iron and steel workers.Under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, through independent innovation, Iron & Steel people have made great achievements in the whole process of technology, equipment, steel products, ultra-low emissions and other fields.On the basis of absorbing the world's outstanding scientific and technological achievements, under the new historical situation, we have more reason and confidence to accelerate China's scientific and technological innovation in the field of steel and lead the development of the world's steel industry through independent innovation and self-reliance.

To achieve the self-reliance and self-improvement of high level science and technology in the steel field, we should face the actual demand for steel materials and industry for the development of people's livelihood and national defense security, take into account the characteristics of the steel industry, fully mobilize innovative elements, gather innovative resources, and jointly make breakthroughs in independent innovation of science and technology in the steel field.To this end, special attention should be given to implementing the following:

(1) With enterprises as the main body, in-depth integration of industry, education and research, collaborative innovation, and "leading the list" to jointly make scientific and technological innovation and efficient breakthrough.With enterprises as the main body, it is necessary for enterprises to fully sort out the key technologies and major scientific and technological issues in the industry, set up a "list", and jointly do a good job in the pilot test of science and technology and the implementation of achievements transformation.Institutions of higher learning and scientific research should be guided by the major national strategic objectives and tasks for the iron and steel industry, strengthen basic research and innovation breakthroughs, and "make up the list" with high-quality scientific and technological achievements.Collaborative innovation to materials, processing, machinery, control, information, such as the multidisciplinary cross, multiple cooperating industry, production, integration, process - equipment - product - service integration innovation, innovation advantage resources into the key technologies which restrict the development of the industry and major problems of science and technology, accelerate the innovation of science and technology and the key technical breakthrough, efficient and powerful generic technology supply system,We will make the transfer and application of scientific and technological achievements more effective.At the same time, we should give full play to the superiority of our socialist system, concentrate our efforts on making breakthroughs in a series of generic technologies, realize industrial "sharing", and promote common technological progress in the whole industry.

(2) Strengthen the two-way interaction and integrated development between basic research/applied basic research in the field of iron and steel and the applied practice of technological innovation. Basic research supports key technological innovation, and applied practice drives the deepening of basic research, so as to accelerate the progress of technological innovation and achievement matening.Application practice is the test standard of scientific and technological innovation. The development of iron and steel industry today provides us with a grand and real scene and a broad stage for scientific and technological innovation. The research and innovation of iron and steel materials and technology makes the application of practice inspection easier and more convenient than ever before.We should not only pay attention to improving the depth of basic research, the degree of maturity and the degree of support, but also pay attention to refining scientific problems in technological innovation and application practice.Practical application results are used to guide and deepen basic theoretical research. As a new origin of innovation, basic research is forced to deepen and spiral upward, and even re-innovation of engineering. Only in this way can scientific research results be truly applied to practice, innovation value can be truly realized, and innovation-driven development can be realized.In the process of innovation, basic research, applied basic research and cutting-edge technology research interact and develop in an integrated way, so as to effectively accelerate the pace of innovation.In fact, the boundary between high-level scientific and technological innovation, basic research and technological innovation is increasingly blurred, more is the composite of the two, more need iron and steel science and technology workers, break through the division of labor barriers and boundaries of innovation.

(3) Pay attention to the innovation of the whole process and the whole industrial chain, and solve problems systematically;We will deepen supply-side reform and wholeheartedly serve the demand side.Iron and steel material manufacturing is a typical process industry, and has a typical "genetic effect", the quality of the final product, is determined by the "ore-smelting - casting - rolling - material" process of each process link, the key core technology breakthrough involves the whole process of multi-process links, need the whole process integration to solve the problem.Iron and steel as a basic raw material, user demand changes. Throughout the development of iron and steel materials, it is the continuous improvement of user demand that promotes the innovation and development of the steel field.Therefore, we should not only do a good job in the steel manufacturing process, but also pay more attention to the demand side of the service, service performance requirements, forcing the composition of the steel material manufacturing process design, process method and equipment means innovation and upgrading, to develop better quality, better performance of steel products.

(4) Adapt to the development trend of digital transformation and material research transformation, pay attention to research method innovation, and promote major original innovation breakthrough of steel materials.In the face of the fourth wave of industrial revolution, iron and steel materials science is undergoing digital and intelligent transformation. The construction of iron and steel materials innovation infrastructure composed of experimental tools, data and computing tools will change the research and development strategy of iron and steel materials science and technology.At the same time, speeding up the process of material discovery and research and development, reducing the cost of material research and development, is also a common concern of current materials research.Under the current background of big data and machine learning, the innovation of materials research methods, the construction of metal materials innovation infrastructure, and the collaboration of metal materials integrated computing are expected to greatly accelerate the breakthrough of original material innovation.Practice has proved that based on big data, machine learning method can quickly build the relationship between process parameters and material properties, on this basis, combining material integration calculation and the experimental methods and means, reverse parsing related basic principle, to establish a major original theoretical system, promote the development of basic principle of metal materials, further boost steel new materials, new technology development is of great significance.

Looking forward to the future, from the development and the national security of the people's livelihood to the steel material and the actual demand of industry, as long as adhering to the "innovation, quality, landing" of scientific spirit, the courage to bear, assertive, iron and steel metallurgy and material science, we will be able to innovation in steel development history of Chinese science and technology, the construction of a country to meet the people's livelihood and national defense development needs,Green, digital, innovative and ecological steel industry, to achieve China's steel industry to take the lead in entering the international leading manufacturing cluster.