On December 12, 2020, the first phrase of the Tai’an special steel capacity replacement project of Shiheng Special Steel Group Co., Ltd. (Shiheng Special Steel) was officially put into operation in Feicheng City. Recently, as the production links in the factory started successively, the vacuum pressure swing adsorption(VPSA)oxygen plant (25,000/80) set up by PKU Pioneer for 4# and 5# blast furnaces also started up successfully and achieved smooth oxygen production.

Tai’an special steel project, with an investment of about $2,324 million, is one of the major projects of the new and old kinetic energy conversion (NOKEC) in Shandong Province. More than 5 million tons of special construction steel production capacity will be generated after the project is officially put into operation, which will make it one of the four major iron & steel industry clusters in the province. The original 30,000Nm3/h cryogenic liquid oxygen equipment of Shiheng Special Steel was unable to meet the production needs with the expansion of production scale. In order to improve the usage coefficient of the blast furnace, thereby further increasing the output and cut the production cost of BF iron making, Shiheng Special Steel, after fully considering the shortage of oxygen consumption, chose to build a new 25,000/80 VPSA oxygen plant (20,000Nm3/h for pure oxygen) for oxygen enrichment before the blast furnace blower to  balance the oxygen supply, i.e., to meet the oxygen demand at this stage after increasing the production capacity and to increase both steel production and energy efficiency.

In this project, the VPSA oxygen unit, as a part of the Tai'an special steel project, was started to construct later when some other key projects in the same period were nearing completion. In order to meet production needs, Shiheng Special Steel requires the VPSA oxygen plant to be put into operation in advance, further shortening the originally tense construction duration. After receiving the customer's request, PKU Pioneer immediately set up a project team with clarified labor division and refined management to carry out the project implementation, and took a number of measures to seize the time and catch up with the construction schedule.

In the preliminary procurement stage, the project team of PKU Pioneer follow up the production processes of oxygen plant materials and components daily and reported to the top managers every week. In the middle stage, the installation methods were flexibly adjusted based on the practical construction situation. For instance, the pipeline was prefabricated according to the construction drawings when the civil construction is not conditioned. During the entire project implementation, the on-site management was executed in strict accordance with the schedule to guarantee all the work could be completed on the same day with quality assurance as the premise. No vacancies were allowed in every position to ensure that the overall progress of the project was completed simultaneously. In addition, PKU Pioneer temporarily dispatched additional personnel to closely link up with the processes and work overtime to beat the time. Through the concerted efforts of the two parties, the oxygen plant was finally put into operation 5 days in advance with unfavorable factors like complex site conditions, strict prevention & control measures. The construction period target was successfully achieved and oxygen was produced smoothly.

Zhang Mingxin, head of procurement for Shiheng special steel project, stated that PKU Pioneer, rigorously abiding by construction quality management regulations, is one of the fastest construction companies in this project. As a responsible enterprise serving customers wholeheartedly, PKU Pioneer has set the benchmark of excellent service suppliers in the project.  PKU Pioneer is a critically important partner of Shiheng Special Steel.

As of the beginning of 2021, PKU Pioneer has built more than 200 industrial oxygen production projects, ranking 1st in performance for 9 consecutive years. The performance of medium and large-scale vacuum pressure swing adsorption oxygen equipment (>1000Nm3/h) occupies an absolute market share, including over 100 VPSA oxygen generation projects with a capacity above 5000Nm3/h, making PKU PIONEER the invisible champion of the oxygen generation industry in China. PKU Pioneer has the richest experience in VPSA oxygen plant design, manufacture, installation, start-up, operation and maintenance in China, and has been devoting ourselves to providing customers with efficient and technologically advanced oxygen solutions, and to creating practical economic benefits for users with cutting-edge technology and high-quality services.