Selected Works of Xu Kuangdi (Volume AB of Iron and Steel Metallurgy)

Author: Xu Kuangdi
Publisher:
Publishing Date: April 1, 2005
Features: "During the 'August 13' Japanese occupation of Shanghai, my parents took my 2-year-old sister and me, who was about to give birth, and fled from Shanghai in a hurry. We struggled westward with the refugee tide. Due to the bumpy and exhausting journey, I was born prematurely in an ancient temple at Songling, the border area between Zhejiang and Jiangxi, at the end of 1937 (December 11). There were no doctors or midwives, not even a rural midwife to be found, so my father had to deliver me under my mother's guidance. At that time, the young parents were both happy about their newborn son but also indignant about the country's poverty and weakness, the Japanese invaders' burning, looting, and plunder, and the Kuomintang army's complete collapse, which had plunged the common people into such a catastrophe. They named me 'Kangdi' to remember the national and family grievances and to hope that future generations would 'be strong and resist the enemy to protect their homeland.' This name was used until 1944 when I was in the second grade of primary school in Kunming. My Chinese teacher told me, 'The defeat of the Japanese invaders is certain, and the victory of the Anti-Japanese War is at hand. May I change your name to a homophone for you?' He then wrote 'Kuangdi' with a calligraphy brush on rough paper, meaning 'to rectify justice and guide peace.' I happily took it back to show my parents, who said it was a good change, and we have used it ever since.
I'll skip the preamble unrelated to my academic career, as it serves two purposes: first, any academic paper must be signed to show responsibility for the arguments, data, and conclusions, so explaining the origin of my name is not too off-topic; second, my love for my country and my filial heart began when I first learned to write my name as a child. Even though I am now past the 'age of destiny,' whenever I sign my name, I still dare not forget my parents' expectations and my teachers' teachings.
People born in the 1930s in modern Chinese history have also experienced a rich life. I have personally lived through the critical period of the Anti-Japanese War, witnessed the corruption of the Kuomintang after the war and the fervent revolutionary mass movements, participated in the joyous procession welcoming the People's Liberation Army into the city and enthusiastically cheered the founding of the new China. I will never forget the high national spirit of singing the 'Communist Youth League Song' and eagerly signing up for the 'Military Cadre School' during the Korean War to defend our homeland. Of course, I have also been affected by political movements such as ideological transformation of intellectuals, suppression campaigns, removing white flags, and the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Until the Cultural Revolution, a few of us like me were labeled as '' (revisionist) 'seeds' and suddenly became targets of the movement, while most people were confused by the endless factional struggles or became observers (so-called '') because their 'close relatives' became targets of the movement.
After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, order was restored, and the realistic ideological and political line was resumed. We were in midlife and took on the task of teaching and scientific research, once again bathed in the sunshine of the scientific spring. A few lucky ones like me benefited from the results of the reform and opening-up, having the opportunity to study abroad, work abroad, and teach abroad, which greatly improved our research methods and academic standards. My ability to do academic work is based on a good education. Due to my family background of intellectuals, my parents placed great importance on education. Looking back, the primary and secondary schools I attended (Lian da, Hangzhou Tian Chang Primary School, Hangzhou Municipal Middle School, Zhejiang Provincial Hangzhou Senior High School) were among the best in the region. In addition to first-class teachers and rigorous academic atmosphere, the schools had many famous teachers (such as Lu Xun, Chen Wangdao, Chen Jianong, Xia Mazu, Li Shucong, Feng Zikai, and Cui Dongbo), and many celebrities also graduated from there. The schools emphasized a spirit of diligence, pragmatism, and simplicity in academic pursuits.
In 1954, I applied to the Beijing Institute of Iron and Steel. Growing up in the water towns of Jiangnan, I actually didn't know what steel smelting was, but I entered the 'steel cradle' (the first alumni presented a marble monument inscribed with the name 'Steel Cradle' and embedded it in the main hall) with the ideal of laying a material foundation for the country's industrialization. My five years of university life (1954–1959) included the suppression campaigns (1955), the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957), and the Great Smelting Drive (1958), but the teaching process remained complete and rigorous, especially from 1954 to 1957, when the teaching order was very normal. The suppression campaigns and Anti-Rightist Campaign only took 2–3 weeks during the summer vacation. In 1958, during the Great Smelting Drive, since our class had been changed from a four-year to a five-year program (1957), the courses had basically been completed, and only some specialized process courses were affected.
After further work, especially when I went to the UK as a short-term visiting scholar at the Imperial College of Technology and as a visiting professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden in the early 1980s, I deeply felt that the foundation I learned in my undergraduate studies was not inferior to those of these world-renowned universities. In some aspects, such as general foundation courses (especially mathematics, mechanics, and thermodynamics), I learned more solidly because I had done many problems and assignments. I will never forget Teacher Lu Xingjie's lectures on advanced mathematics. In a lecture hall with 180 students, he could even notice a student's wandering gaze and tactfully restate the key points in a humorous and patient manner. His spirit of teaching was truly admirable. I also clearly remember Teacher Wang Xianzu's vigorous board writing and his forceful force decomposition diagrams without rulers (the lines were straight, and even the angles were precise). Especially, his concise and concise teaching style made students not rush to take notes but wait for his next sentence. After class, reviewing the classroom notes was like reading a concise article.
Physical chemistry is a notoriously difficult course, especially the thermodynamics part, but Teacher Gao Yishan brought it to life. Not only were the concepts clear and rigorous, but the examples and derivations were detailed. Moreover, he would leave 5–10 minutes for a summary after each class, sometimes asking a student to summarize first, with others making supplements, and then he would provide comments. During the later period of the Cultural Revolution (1974–1976), due to my wife and I living in different places, I lived in a collective dormitory with many free evenings. When I reviewed the notes of my undergraduate and specialized foundation courses, I was surprised to find that during the semester, Teacher Gao had called me three times to summarize. That night, I made special notes in my notebook and recorded his comments, showing how much his teaching resonated with me.
Another significant feature of the teaching at the Institute of Iron and Steel was its emphasis on practice. In addition to strict classroom teaching, the school placed great importance on cultivating students' hands-on skills. In the first year, we had half a day of metalworking practice every week, independently operating various machines such as lathes, wrenches, and milling machines. Casting required students to independently complete tasks from making mud cores, sand molds, and boxing to melting iron in the furnace and ladling molten iron. The professional internships were even more systematic. During the summer vacation of the second year, the field internship required on-site observation and recording of key parameters for the entire production process from 'raw materials—sintering—coking—blast furnace—open-hearth furnace—casting—blooming—primary rolling—finish rolling' to auxiliary systems such as gas plants, power plants, and water plants, as well as train vehicle dispatching yards. At that time, the young students were 'ignorant of the heavens and the earth,' and everyone used the excuse of 'needing to be a chief engineer in the future' to ask and take notes desperately. As a result, after the internship, the factory's security department collected everyone's notebooks, saying they contained major state secrets and could not be kept by students.
The third-year production internship was conducted by major. Our department of metallurgy was assigned to furnace front work, requiring us to learn to operate from the most laborious tasks like cleaning slag pits, sweeping platforms, prying open furnace doors, and blocking ladle holes, to blowing oxygen, sampling, measuring temperature, skimming slag, alloy calculation, and refractory repair. At that time, the degree of mechanization and automation in steelmaking was very low, especially in electric furnaces. In addition to the main metal materials being added to the furnace top by baskets, all other auxiliary materials (lime, fluorspar, ore), as well as ferroalloys, had to be thrown into the furnace from 3–4 meters away with shovels. Whenever stainless steel was smelted, the red-hot micro-carbon chromium iron (1–2 tons) had to be thrown into the furnace. This was a test of the operator's strength and skill. Watching the steelworkers' elegant and dynamic movements made us envy them. Since chromium iron was imported at that time and very expensive (each shovelful was more than a month's food allowance for students), we were not qualified to throw it. For this reason, after the internship, we set up a wooden 'furnace door frame' outside the school dormitory and asked the construction department for two carts of stones. Four meters away from the furnace door frame, one person stood on each side and began 'shoveling practice.' Some classmates even learned various 'flowering' movements of the workers, which drew cheers and laughter from the onlookers.
Looking back today, the students at that time seemed foolishly silly. Some asked why they didn't use technological innovation and mechanization for feeding. Unaware, that was an era when 'labor was sacred' and 'intellectuals had to undergo hard physical labor to transform and reform their thinking.' In the fourth year, the internship was as a furnace captain, in addition to working with the team, mainly learning how to comprehensively grasp and judge the furnace condition and command the entire smelting process of a furnace. The key was how to make friends with the furnace captain, otherwise he would get annoyed with you following him around. The classmates rushed to visit homes, have heart-to-heart talks, and find mentors. At that time, people were very sincere and straightforward. When the workers knew that we were determined to learn skills and dedicate ourselves to the steel industry, they all opened their hearts and formed pairs, teaching us hand in hand. That month was truly unforgettable. We, a group of university students who only knew theoretical steelmaking, actually 'independently' smelted two high-quality alloy steels before leaving the factory. That kind of joy and excitement rarely appeared in later years because it was learned after paying so much sweat and effort.
The fifth year was the graduation internship. Those who did factory design went to the factory design department or the Steel Design Institute, while those who wrote research papers went to the factory's research institute or the technical group of the workshop, to collect materials needed for their papers and conduct on-site experiments or tests. After two months, they returned to the university to complete the drawings or papers. I came back with deep nostalgia and good feelings, recalling my education in the 1950s. Of course, with the passage of time and the rapid development of science and technology, modern steelmaking and metallurgy have been completely mechanized and partially informatized. Some people might think these old stories are not worth mentioning or even childish. I also remind myself constantly to keep up with the times and innovate, never to be complacent or indulge in traditional thinking patterns, but I still believe that the most fundamental benefit of the practical training education is not learning to operate (which will eventually be replaced by mechanization and automation) but teaching me how to be a person and how to pursue academic research.
Of course, I don't advocate that today's students of metallurgy spend a lot of time learning manual operation skills that are no longer needed. However, I still insist that my graduate students must go for internships on-site, not only pressing buttons in the furnace operation room but also going to the field to experience the production process, where there are many things that cannot be seen on computer screens or various sensors. Because all control systems are lagging, that is, they only adjust when a parameter deviates from the control range, and they still cannot completely replace the early warning judgment formed through human practical experience. Moreover, sensors can also make mistakes.
In May 1984, while working at Scan-Lancer in Sweden, I was producing high-walled steel pipes for the North Sea oilfield with anti-sulfur corrosion at the Recomby plant of the British Steel Corporation. The sulfur content should be less than 10 ppm (≤0.001%), and the process involved injection metallurgy. According to the contract, the tapping temperature should be ≥1650°C, but during one tapping, I judged the temperature through the steelmaking mirror (brought from China) to be around 1600°C, or even lower. I then proposed to stop the ladle blowing process, otherwise the ladle might freeze. The British steelmaking plant manager reviewed the automatic temperature records in the control room and said with British humor, 'I hope this time your eyes are not accurate,' and insisted on proceeding as planned. I insisted that this not be included in the 'experimental supply' plan. He decided to have a joke with me and wrote on the furnace record, 'Professor Xu thinks this's temperature is not enough,' and asked me to sign below. I signed without hesitation. As a result, nearly 200 tons of molten steel froze in the ladle, causing a major accident. From then on, whenever a test furnace was tapped, they would ask me to take a look with my 'Chinese eyes' to see the temperature.
Many aspects of university life are worth remembering, but what affected me the most in terms of professional training was the solid foundation of basic courses and the cultivation of a spirit of. In addition to the teaching plan, the teachers' words and deeds were also role models and incentives. Professor Zhu Jue, a famous professor who returned from studying in the United States, still took us to the factory for internships even at the age of nearly 60. Especially his sensitivity to new things and his tireless practical spirit made him a pioneer and founder of the electric slag refining technology in China. Professor Guan Yulong was full of youthful vigor and talent at that time, and listening to his lectures was truly a pleasure. Although he was not as physically fit as us young students at that time, his judgment and sense of furnace front processes earned him a high reputation among students, on-site engineering technicians, and workers. From 1959 to 1976, after graduating from university, I engaged in professional teaching work, starting with experiments and internships and eventually teaching specialized courses and guiding graduation theses. Teaching greatly benefited my logical thinking, organized expression, and the habit of constantly consulting literature. During this period, I also participated in national projects such as improving the quality of stainless steel pipes for aviation, military bearing steel, and the research and production of thin-walled oxygen cylinders. The first two projects won national awards. At that time, it was a joint research group of the army, factories, and universities, so everyone's names were not listed, and the published articles were naturally in the name of the research group, so they could not be included in the paper collection.
I should mention that in 1978, together with my colleague Ni Delin, under the leadership of the Steel Department of the Ministry of Metallurgy, we organized a one-month advanced training course on 'High-Power Electric Furnaces and Out-of-Furnace Refining.' The participants were technical backbones of various special steel plants. In this training course, what was summarized and introduced was the situation of major special steel plants in foreign countries using these two new technologies, and more than 100 articles were compiled from foreign literature for reading materials, giving the technical personnel of the steel plants, which had been closed off for a long time, a new perspective. About half of the participants later became chief engineers, deputy plant managers, and plant managers of the factories. Later, I was invited by the Shanghai Metal Society to hold a series of lectures on the physicochemical processes of steelmaking and metallurgy in the Shanghai Science and Technology Conference Hall, half a day a week. At that time, foreign countries had already had physical and mathematical models of steelmaking and metallurgy processes to meet the needs of computer process control modeling. However, before and during the Cultural Revolution, the basic theory and process technology in the metallurgical textbooks of Chinese universities were seriously disconnected. The theory could only explain the reasons for the process but could not guide it quantitatively and timely. This series of lectures took the theoretical model achievements of foreign countries as examples to analyze the thermodynamics and kinetics of various reactions in the entire metallurgical process and carried out quantitative calculations. At the end, more than 100 participants were required to write an article on how to apply theory to analyze the metallurgical process, based on their own work. Since the participants were mostly technical backbones of steel plants, the papers were rich and diverse, and many of them became representative works for promoting to higher technical positions. Most of the papers were published in steelmaking and metallurgy journals in China and Shanghai.
From 1981 to 1985, I successively carried out basic research and process development on injection metallurgy in the UK and Sweden. Due to the results obtained jointly applying for patents in the UK and Sweden, and especially during my tenure at SL Company in Sweden, I signed a technical confidentiality agreement, so few articles were published during this period. During this period, for the needs of the job, in addition to Sweden, I traveled to seven countries including the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Russia, and Hungary, visiting more than 30 steel plants, and attended many international metallurgy fairs and international steel conferences, widely understanding the situation of the world steel industry and making friends with many famous scholars, entrepreneurs, and engineering technicians in the steel industry, from whose research work I benefited greatly.
Here, I would like to specially mention the three professors who had the greatest impact on my academic career. First is Professor Sven Ektorp of the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. He was a full-of-innovation idealist and not only the initiator of injection metallurgy and molten reduction but also established an experimental device for thin strip casting in his laboratory in the early 1980s. What I learned from him was the spirit of constantly innovating traditional steel and metallurgy technologies. Professor Ektorp lived in the suburbs of Stockholm, and his garden was very large. In a corner of the lawn and flower beds, there stood an 8m3 small blast furnace. When foreign delegations visited, he would ask us professors and graduate students of the Royal Institute of Technology to help him blow air, load materials, and light the furnace. When the guests arrived, he would open the tap hole, pour out molten iron, and cast a piece of iron inscribed with his name as a souvenir, which he was very proud of. When I told him that in 1958, I built 60 almost identical 'mini blast furnaces' in the Yongdeng Mountains of Gansu and operated them non-stop for more than a month, he was amazed and widened his eyes at the age of 70, saying, 'I used the ancient Chinese ironmaking technology!'
The second is Professor Fuwa, the former head of the Metallurgy Department at Northeast University in Japan, whom I deeply respect. Professor Fuwa was born into a famous Japanese family and a diplomatic family. Before the Xinhai Revolution, his grandfather had helped Sun Yat-sen. In the early 1950s, he graduated from Tokyo University and immediately went to MIT in the United States, where he conducted research on metallurgical physicochemistry under the guidance of the great metallurgy master J. Chipman. Together, they completed the carbon-oxygen equilibrium curve in molten steel, [C][O] = 0.0022 (1600°C), which is a classic work in the refining process of molten steel. Whether it is the reaction in the converter or the boiling decarburization and deoxygenation during vacuum treatment, it proved the scientificity and correctness of this research. Professor Fuwa was a man of profound knowledge and elegant speech, a modest and gentle gentleman. We first met at the International Steel Conference in Düsseldorf, Germany. He mistakenly thought I was from the United States and asked me many names of professors of Chinese descent in the United States. When I told him I was from mainland China, he quickly bowed his head in apology and asked me in detail about my work experience, warmly inviting me to visit and lecture in Japan. Due to my work in Sweden at that time, it was not possible to go. Professor Fuwa was retired from Northeast University in 1988 and became a chief consultant and honorary president of the Japan Institute of Metals at Nippon Irohiron Company. With such a high status, he even personally accompanied me to visit Tokyo University and Tokyo Institute of Technology. When I went to Sendai (Northeast University) and Nagoya (Nagoya University, Nippon Irohiron Nagoya Works), the old gentleman accompanied me to the train, making me, this unknown junior, feel ashamed.
The third is Professor Oeters, who was then teaching at the Technical University of Berlin. I recommended a master student to him, so I often visited his laboratory when working in Europe. Professor Oeters had the typical German characteristics of rigorous work, seriousness, and integrity. What affected me the most was his attention to the design of experimental equipment and his serious checks, which ensured the accuracy and reliability of scientific research data. I went to Berlin three times, and his reception schedule was almost the same: visit the laboratory—have PhD students report on their work—work lunch—ask me to make a report, while he listened quietly, and after my report, he would ask only one question. In the mid-1980s, after returning to China, I invited him to visit China twice, and he also required a similar schedule. I naturally followed his wishes, but unfortunately, at that time, the English proficiency of Chinese PhD students was poor, and their stammering narratives could be, but when he asked questions with a thick English accent, they were 'in a mess' and had to rely on translation. By the way, these three highly respected foreign metallurgical experts I most respect are all visiting professors of my alma mater, so whether in terms of age, knowledge, or the order of teachers and students, they are naturally my teachers.
In the mid-1980s, after returning to China, until the end of the century, the 15 years were the climax of my academic work. The knowledge and training I gained abroad quickly burst out, and the research focus shifted from metallurgical processes to applied theoretical foundations and some innovative fields. At that time, our research collective at Shanghai University had two consensuses: first, we would not do 'sweeping the net to catch fish' type of research, but after careful thermodynamic, kinetic, and thermal balance calculations, we would strive to enter industrial-scale experiments after condition tests in the laboratory. For example, the work of producing stainless steel mother liquid in the converter through molten reduction was based on condition tests and theoretical calculations to establish a process model for experimental blowing, which was successfully tested on a 25-ton oxygen top-blown converter. The increase of chromium in the mother liquid, the temperature, and the decrease of reduced chromium oxide in the slag were basically consistent with the computer simulation curve, especially the blowing endpoint was completely consistent. Second, based on the actual situation of the school and the discipline team, we could only find some new fields to break through, and it was impossible to 'launch a full attack and complete the set.' Thus, we successively chose to break through in areas such as injection metallurgy, molten reduction production of stainless steel mother liquid, solidification under special physical fields, and the use of high-temperature Raman spectrometers combined with phase diagram calculation methods to determine and calculate the structure and activity of components in high-temperature molten slag. 'Strong magnetic field metal solidification behavior' and 'high-temperature Raman spectroscopy technology' currently have a certain influence both domestically and internationally.
Since 2001, two of my Ph.D. students in the field of steelmaking and metallurgy have had their theses selected as one of the Top 100 Excellent Doctoral Theses in China (evaluated every two years). Before I became the Mayor of Shanghai in 1995, no matter what position I worked in, I still spent half a day a week in the laboratory to directly guide the work of graduate students. Even after 1995, for graduate students under my guidance, I had to personally ask about their research progress, review their research proposals, and correct doctoral theses, and I would personally review all articles that required my signature. I would never sign articles that did not belong to my research field or that I had not guided or participated in, even if they were members of my team. Here, I would like to specially thank Professor Jiang Guochang, with whom I have been cooperating for many years and shared the same fate. Since 1995, he has played a huge role in establishing the Steelmaking and Metallurgy Laboratory at Shanghai University and guiding the daily work of the research collective. His hardworking and persistent spirit helped the high-temperature Raman spectroscopy laboratory develop from scratch and continuously improve, and it has now reached a level where it can communicate and exchange with international peers. In our team, there are also a group of young Ph.D. supervisors, who are specialized, active in thinking, and bold in innovation, and have shown outstanding achievements in several fields: Professor Ren Zhongming and Professor Deng Kang in the scientific phenomena of metal solidification under a strong magnetic field, Professor Ding Weizhong in the selective reduction of metal oxides, Professor Hong Xin in energy conservation and process automation in metallurgical processes, and Professor Zhai Qijie in the control of ultra-fine grain solidification. Among them, Professor Ren Zhongming has been successively selected as an Outstanding Young Scholar of the National Natural Science Foundation and a Distinguished Professor of the Yangtze Scholar Program.
What makes me even happier is that Academician Zhou Guozhi of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States has recently joined this team, becoming the academic core and leader of the team. I believe that although I have left Shanghai, this key laboratory jointly established by the country and Shanghai will continue to forge ahead bravely!
Looking back and forth, I am filled with countless emotions. China has developed from a country that had to import all kinds of steel to the world's largest steel producer. This is the crystallization of the hard work of several generations of steel workers. This year marks the 50th anniversary of my entry into the field of steelmaking and metallurgy (since 1954 when I entered university). Shanghai University Press has selected representative papers on steelmaking and metallurgy that I have published and compiled them into a book. I am very grateful for the care and love of the editors and leaders of the press. 'Looking back on the path I have come, the green and lush mountains and forests,' this can only be considered a record of the footsteps of a Chinese scientist who loves and dedicates himself to the steel industry!