A Look Inside The Giant Blast Furnaces Of Chinese Industry | The Earth's Riches | Spark

dortmund here at the heart of the rural district there once were blast furnaces foundry and rolling mill more than 20,000 people once worked on the grounds of the vest fire iron works at baazi plants but the ayran works were unprofitable and were closed down together with the steel works and put up for sale the Chinese steel group shegaon took an interest in this bargain after all secondhand plans are cheaper than new ones the only problem how does one transport 250,000 tons of material from Dortmund to China workshop supervisor Gong Akbar had worked on the vest for an era works for 30 years he was there when the workers from the celestial Empire made themselves at home and packed up his furnace [Music] as far as at the beginning it wasn't really quite clear to us how the Chinese were going to work all we saw was that dozens of them walked around labeled all sorts of plants with their Chinese characters unlogged unbelief Tatar Midian machine ization drift siphon we were not amazed that it has worked the way they planned it as a sole function Ian can be tedious for her within only 12 months 800 Chinese people had disassembled the vest fan IRA works and taken them away with him the biggest industrial transport in history the plants were reassembled in some jargon not far from Shanghai [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the city above the sea Shanghai is the boom city of Asia the quintessence of modern China fast loud and colorful just like the country as a whole Shanghai has gone through some turbulent changes the driving force behind such enormous economic growth is industry and the building trade and both more than anything need iron and steel no other country on earth uses and produces more of it than China does 200 kilometers upstream the Yangtze River the docks of the steel companies Shagga it is two o'clock in the morning a 40,000 ton freighter arrives it carries rust-colored soil from Australia the material from which iron and steel are made byron vo can be found almost all over the world that is why it normally can be bought cheaply but a worldwide fight for the best quality materials from Australia and Brazil has broken out the prices have risen steeply because the demand in China continues to grow one third of the irenna worldwide now goes to the celestial Empire shovel Falls of dusty soil are loaded onto conveyor belts and are distributed across the huge storage grounds of the steel company a few hours later like every morning mr. sau walks the 300 meters from his flats to the main entrance of shegaon sau is one of 10,000 people now employed by the huge steel company and new people are being employed all the time the first few weeks the new arrivals have to march to work and lockstep discipline is greatly valued in China at great speed shagging developed from a small company to a powerful private steel producer thanks to the plans from Dortmund it continues to grow with no end in sight [Music] there are two ways of producing steel either ayran or is melted to make Pig Ivan and then harden to make steel or the steel is made from scrap metal mr. sau supervises a furnace that produces steel from scrap ayran 40% of Steel worldwide have produced that way no other metals recycled even nearly as much carefully women crane operators lowered the metal scrap buckets before they are taken to the melting furnace the right choice and distribution is very important for sau and his people to be able to melt good steel mr. sau is currently plagued by worries like all raw materials for steel production scrap is in short supply that is why mr. sau inspects the scrap storage every morning before briefing his people and checking the furnace [Music] because chanting a figure just described yourself quite bad quality it contains a lot of copper because it is scrapped from old electrical equipment the steel is very thin there it is already an end product that is hardly worth reusing and gone so yeah young lady from the one hand resources are scarce and the other prices are high that is why we have to use this bad scrap anyway the price for scrap has gone up by a huge amount by 20 to 30 euros per ton in the last few months so like that either that there should really be much more scrap here mr. sound needs supplies for the turn of the year because there won't be any fresh supplies at that time for two weeks the scrap is delivered by lorry but mostly by ship most of the small scrap barges are family businesses the ship is their home they collect the scrap and the provinces and transport it to the steel company during the Chinese New Year celebration these small companies go on holiday captain G also delivers scrap with his ship he has already delivered his cargo now he goes to one of the islands outside Shanghai in the Yangtze Delta to collect fresh goods he has been working on barges for more than 30 years he has personally experienced the ups and downs of Chinese politics the economic reforms began in the 80s and 90s have allah ma the reforms have finally given us the opportunity to work independently a colleague and I then bought the ship ourselves we have turned from a collective to a proper private competent also they would be that the very beginning that we this time captain too gets very high-quality scrap but still the ship does not make him rich of the 1,000 euros that he can earn per month he needs one half for the ship the rest he shares with his partner that leaves just over two hundred euros for himself that is enough to feed his family today small private businesses like that of the scrap captain contribute a great deal to the economic power of China at that time I thought now we have a completely new political if I buy a ship now am responsible for myself when I work a lot I can earn more and my life gets better that is how I imagined it assemble each Arab man use it the mashanda [Music] the economic changes of the past two decades were most profitable for the towns in China's East Coast most of all for Shanghai thousands of multi-story buildings were built here in the past ten years everything old is pulled down and rebuilt there is no end in sight for the building boom in many Western Chinese provinces the economic revival has yet to materialize in China the gap between rich and poor getting bigger millions of people therefore moved from the rural areas to the rich east five kilometers from the tower blocks of the Shanghai commercial center fishermen Pei is at work drive over there mister pay is not after fish he fishes for scrap every day his cousin takes him to the Wong pool in his little wooden boat there mister pay casts his magnet the fisherman and his cousin together with our wives arrived from the for a province of Anhui further inland to make their fortune in the East nothing stuck I arrived in Shanghai seven years ago to fish for eels but now there are almost no ears here anymore that is why I stopped fishing and started collecting scrap on a good day I can catch 50 kilograms on a bad day is only five kilograms Pei can sell one kilogram of scrap for two yuan about twenty cents so he makes about 80 euros per month pays magnet would be able to hoist up to 200 kilograms but it is usually only small metal parts that are thrown into the river during ship repair works sau sau don't whatta we do it early in the morning at lunchtime oh it's late at night whenever the police is not working when they work we stop because it is not really allowed Pei and his cousin often fish late at night when there is the least risk of getting caught for their work to be worth it they have to make quite a big catch this evening 40 tons of scrap metal are charged into mr. sell scrap furnace more than fishermen pay and fish for in two years here and the so called electric arc furnace new steel is made from scrap and additives supervisor sau is proud of his furnace which has been in operation for a long time before the plans from Dortmund arrived my furnace were the first one of its type in all of Asia and the sixth of its kind worldwide some of the scrap is preheated here which means that we can melt steel at great speed the next load of scrap will be heated in a special shaft of mr. Sal's furnace and put into the furnace bit by bit this saves valuable time and energy now the scrap furnace begins it's real work the enormous and still glowing electrodes are lowered into the furnace and the arc is ignited a continuous electrical discharge between the electrodes and the scrap produces heat of more than 3000 degrees and an unbelievable noise I started working here 14 years ago when I heard this noise for the first time I felt like running away go away but now it's like that when we don't hear the noise while we work it is really strange without the noise you don't feel comfortable anymore for as long as the furnace is working properly I really like hearing the noise for people from outside it is noise but for us it's a sign that everything is working well the smelting process takes about 40 minutes so that it is faster and in order to save energy Sal blows a supply of pure oxygen into the furnace through a lens that is mounted on the side through the arcs extreme heats in the pure oxygen the scrap gradually becomes molten the smelting process in the electric arc furnace uses an enormous amount of energy this is a problem in China because energy capacities lag behind ever-growing demand [Music] finally the first molten slag runs out at the side and floats on top of this deal because it is lighter the slag contains those substances that ended up in the furnace together with the scrap and that would contaminate the steel [Music] [Applause] [Music] once the scrap has become liquid the workers have to take a sample an unpleasant job because the temperature next to the furnace is more than 100 degrees the samples are immediately analyzed in the laboratory only once the mixture is right the cover of the furnace will be opened then 100 tons of crude steel can be tapped despite is routine at the furnace when mr. Sal looks back on the rapid changes that have taken place in the steel company over the past few years he can sometimes hardly believe it himself [Music] I really must say that we in the steel company are developing unbelievably fast but these constant changes also mean that we are under some significant pressure we didn't have molten paper now we have the blast furnaces from Dortmund and the large foundry and all the other processes for producing steel suddenly we have for us that means that we have to continue to learn Yoshio here - $10 [Music] every day at 11:30 a.m. on the dot they have a break from learning and working then it is lunchtime in the steel company and in the rest of China for an hour and a half they forget all about steel and iron and mr. sau is looking forward to that [Music] [Music] he who eats is a king it says a Chinese proverb eating is a favorite activity in the People's Republic and a matter of importance people put up with a seven-day working week in low wages but to cancel lunch would be simply unforgivable [Music] the to blast furnaces from Dortmund do not process scrap here iron ore is smelted into iron once a day safety manager leo has to climb on top of the two furnaces they extend almost 100 meters into the sky when the waste gases do not block it too much this affords you an impressive view over the steel company and the Yangtze River the company's premises cover an area of more than 14 square kilometers and it is continuously being expanded there here we are on top of the second furnace it has been in operation for only one month every morning I have to check whether the equipment up here all works faultlessly because of the blast furnace gases we always have to come up here in pairs it can be very dangerous yo there can be a column it's happening with you the machine room has to be checked as well the massive cable drums on which the conveyor cages are suspended a powered from here they are used to transport the ayran or which was delivered by ship to the top and to pour it into the blast furnace their oxygen is extracted from it this above all requires coke once the irenna and the coke are in the furnace it is almost impossible to influence what goes on inside then the quality of the pig Iren has essentially already been determined at the foot of the blast furnace final preparations for the tapping when the hots pig Iren pours out of the furnace slowly the drill is driven in front of the tap hole almost all the workers here are young and inexperienced none of them has ever worked with such a large blast furnace as a result of the steel boom experienced workers are rare after a short while the drill seized [Music] safety manager Lou cannot help but the workers know what to do now they have to help the process along with the oxygen lands pure oxygen is blown into the tap wall to clear the way for the pig iron a hard job for the workers the heat next to the tap hall is enormous and then there's the hail of sparks from the burning oxygen but still for protection normal outdoor shoes overalls and the towel in front of your face have to be sufficient a small opening has been made now the drill has to finish opening the tap hole finally the 1500 degree hot pig-iron gushes into the tapping spout nothing much is left on the drill itself the pig Iren absorbs a lot of carbon in the blast furnace it is brittle and difficult to process that is why the pig iron is later hardened into steel in the next step after the pig Iren the lighter slag pours from the tap hole it is used for road building or for cement you and his people have to constantly make sure that the spout does not get blocked and the red-hot stream does not burst its banks unblock the spout over there every time the same everything must go away it's too much in that place it's piling up more and more yaeyama david or video back with barge captain Jew his ship is fully loaded by now together with other scrap transporters he is just waiting for the lock to open so that he can set off there is a lot of competition in his business the return is long sometimes he thinks about whether this line of work is still worth doing pays well young woman of course it is very difficult to drive such a ship at my age if there was another option I would like to do it it is my trade after I have been doing it for decades already and I also believe that if politics continues the way it is now then we and China have a bright future ahead of us the lock is open captain juice sets off with this cargo of scrub he has a day's journey upstream the young to river ahead of him this is one of the most fertile regions in China here every spare square meter is used for intense agriculture only a fraction of China's area is suitable for the cultivation of grain and rice at all too little for its 1.3 billion inhabitants the People's Republic already has to import a lot of grain but industrialization is flourishing particularly along the banks of the Yangtze River today an enormous number of industrial parks power stations and docks gather along the last 300 kilometers to the mouth of the river near Shanghai China is investing a lot to improve infrastructure soon you will never be further than 20 kilometers away from a motorway that way more and more arable land disappears under reinforced concrete [Music] near Nanjing a few hundred kilometers away from Shanghai early in the morning the workers set off to drive their boats to the middle of the Yangtze River they are building one of the monumental bridges across the river most of the world's big bridge projects are currently being planned in China mr. tang is responsible for one of the two support columns today the weather is good and so he wants to put up two more steel parts with his people the support column will be one and a half times as high as the Cologne Cathedral [Music] [Applause] nannies and your bid with us this is the northern part of the Nanjing bridge it's the first time that we are building a bridge with steel columns in China the design follows the shape of the Eiffel Tower at the same time it is also the Chinese character for human being all steel structures here are bent that makes it quite a difficult structure we only work with the latest technologies [Applause] [Music] first of all project manager Tang checks the tool steel objects the preassembled parts were delivered by ship the night before both of them are more than 10 metres high and weigh 150 tonnes the parts can be lifted to the top column only by crane working with this crane involves quite a risk the crane load sways and swings easily that is one of the main problems of our work we can only work when wind forces are low the band fidelity to the wooden gun today there is almost no wind at the top of the crane it gives a good view of the Yangtze River it is China's lifeline and one of the longest and busiest rivers in the world for the Chinese it symbolizes their country after a 20-minute is sent through the inside of the column project manager Tang arrives at the top 20 workers have to install the new steel part on a few square meters lifting it is a slow process that will take at least one and a half hours until it is up here on the ground below the Thais are being loosened slowly the crane driver lifts the first part he must be very careful the heavy weight of the steel object means that the crane ropes can easily start swaying or get out of control [Music] back with scrap fishermen pay in Shanghai he has had enough for today it was a miserable catch like so often recently Pei and his cousin are not officially registered in Shanghai and therefore have no social security at all it is still almost impossible in China to become registered anywhere other than your hometown that's because there is a lot of unemployment in many provinces and the peasants income is minimal millions move to the richest cities nonetheless there they are tolerated as cheap laborers for economic growth oh my god oaks are all over the river now a few years ago there were no ships here at all you're never alone she was so video data there are a few ships that collect wood we have fished out of the water they take the scrap to the steel factories and sell it on they are the middlemen no matter fact mr. pay and this cousin want to know what their colleagues have managed to collect and stop by another man unfortunately there is less and less scrap around all those who used to fish for eel are now coming here to fish for scrap soon there will be no scrap at all in the water a box full of rusty pieces of metal that is the catch of the many scrap fishermen today pay and his cousin drive home Jenna some have given up already and returned home they only come here when it's El season there is less and less to catch when there is no more scrap then we just have to find work on dry land soon there will be no more work on the water any remains the toy mr. Pei does not just have to feed himself and his wife his six-year-old son lives at home with his grandparents he has just started school the scrap fisherman has to pay for the school fees and meals for the Chinese a good education has top priority every year he tries to send a few hundred euros home often it is half of what he earns what did you play [Music] his cousin had a son just under a year ago for as long as he is not at school yet he can live with him on the ship then the child has to go back home in Shanghai the school fees would be much higher because their son is not officially registered too much for the scrap fishermen back at the Nanjing bridge the steel part has now almost arrived at the top of the column the workers are getting more tense slowly the 150 tons of steel are put into position half of the workers are standing inside and the other half outside stop for a minute stop it careful in there admit to the left everybody inside be careful a bit higher suddenly one corner tilts to one side stop stop stop everything okay in there carry on lower still millimeter by millimeter the steel part is lowered the narrow upper and lower edges must fit each other perfectly even a tiny deviation can have devastating consequences for the statics of the entire bridge it fits my family huh [Music] manager tang and his people are relieved now the steel part will just need to be secured using hundreds of bolts and screws [Music] huh back at the steel company Chacon the massive metal daddles which are used to transport liquid pig iron and hot steel have to be kept at a consistent temperature mr. Shannon has a long way to his place of work high above the levels and the converters great heat and bad air are part of his job mr. Shen is a crane drive at the shotgun steel company like almost everything here also Chen's equipment came from dot long two years ago that had certain advantages some because when I started here the conditions weren't very good the D dusting plants were bad today even the cranes have air conditioning the employees working conditions have improved quite a lot [Music] here at the steelworks the pig Iren arrives from the blast furnace it is still liquid the crane driver transports to full levels two large steel containers the converters there the pig Iram is converted into steel are on our way to the second converter while working one always has to watch the colleagues on the ground to make sure there are no accidents involved and after the converter moves while I charge the pic Aaron and I have to direct the laddle with this movement so that nothing gets built that is the most important thing in my work mr. Shen has been there for 20 years and he is famous for a steady hand so far he has never spilled anything slowly he pours the liquid Pig Aran into the massive steel container the converter can process more than two hundred tons in one go while the converter is being put up right again crane driver shen drives back and fetches the next level of pig iron several converters operate in parallel that is the only way to process the huge amounts of pig iron from the blast furnaces the gates closed in front of the filled converter now the so called grief finding processes begin oxygen is blown into the converter at great pressure in order to burn out excess carbon and other unwanted substances finally pig iron turns into steam after eight hours in the crane mr. Shen Paxson and that is just as well because like most workers at chugun he works seven days a week the factory develops the more we earn our standard of living is getting better and better the flats used to be quite bad I have now been working in this factory for 20 years and meanwhile we have built our own houses [Music] 20 years ago that was only farmland around here and small houses made of wood and loam today the houses are made from reinforced concrete and stone and they have to be large like almost everybody here crane driver Shen comes from a peasant family his 70 year old mother-in-law is still out on the field every day you can go home you don't need to work here anymore think that these are simply tiles and these are steel windows the steel for these window frames and the steel for the building is from shegaon that is our steel we bought these windows ourselves we have had them made in a workshop there's about two months to build this house although some rooms are still empty Shen is proud of his 250 square meters the liquid steel from crane driver Shen's converter must quickly be poured into the casting machine workers add casting powder in order to improve the metal surface inside the plant the steel is shaped and at the same time significantly cooled down at the bottom the shaped instill red-hot steel comes out as an infinite strand but is then cut into so-called steel slabs [Music] the slabs which weighed tons are currently in great demand worldwide Chicago steamers are all after these specimen slabs are rolled into plates and steel sheet which will eventually turn into cars and tins ships and fridges the steel from mr. sours furnace also needs to be cast but here everything is a size smaller mr. Sol likes watching the red-hot metal while it cools down the cooling water is very important for the quality of the steel I like this place very much and it's like your FREE sauna for me i watch it every day mr. Salz casting plan does not produce slabs it produces so-called billets beams made from steel six red-hot strands emerge from the plant simultaneously they are also cut into individual parts then they are transported to the steel mill next door the steel beams are heated up once again in order to make them more malleable then the steel is put through several rollers that exert enormous pressure on the metal gradually the thick beam turns into thin wire the narrower the steel beam the quicker the process in the end and races through the rolling plants at 160 km/h the beam has turned into nine kilometres of long wire there are many uses for the wire from shagging it is used for reinforced concrete or woven into cables for bridges and cranes every so often mr. sau pops into the wire store to see what happens to all the scrap that ends up in his furnace he finds it difficult to imagine that China will need less steel one day Sauer is optimistic about the future of this country of course I can't say exactly how the Chinese economy stands worldwide I can't judge that I'm not sure but I would say that in 20 years we double our economic output that is the Minamata [Music] the highest television tower in Asia the most modern airport in China the transrapid all that was created within the last 10 years in Shanghai alone much of it was built with steel from shegaon for the 2010 World Fair an entire district will be pulled down and built from scratch an enormous deep-sea Harbor is also being built the People's Republic is now the third largest trading nation in the world China wants to become the economic power of the 21st century the speed at which things change and the general optimism in China are impressive nobody quite knows however whether the country will manage the leap from the 19th into the 21st century within only a few decades [Music] after a long day mr. sow is happy to be at home at last as usual he walks the few hundred meters from his work to his home mr. sow has done his work for the day but at the steelworks and in the rest of the country the work goes on [Music] gannets bar has come to terms with the fact that the steel is now being produced in Sanjaya gun and no longer in Dortmund we have missed on the mute out so I try to hand over the plant to the Chinese as best as possible I should think it won't have been the last steel work and the last furnace to close down somewhat goes on like that who knows which way that's how it is you saw [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 1,131,768

Rating: 4.6740251 out of 5

Keywords: Spark, Science, Technology, Engineering, Learning, How To, documentary, factual, construction, full documentary, space documentary, bbc documentary, Science documentary, chinese metal, chinese steel mill, chinese steel mill accident, chinese steel mill burn safety, steel industry, iron industry, iron industry process

Id: qg9IR5_u-bU

Length: 43min 4sec (2584 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/GelDeAveia]

Anyone got more steel related recommendations?

[u/edsonvelandia]

Haha I was watching this earlier today, thought of posting it too.