State Scientific Center of the Russian Federation JSC “RPA “CNIITMASH” (belonging within JSC Atomenergomash, a machine-building division of ROSATOM) and JSC Ural Steel developed a technology for commercial production of hot-rolled plates of new steel grades. The material and technology are necessary for the use in liquid natural gas (LNG) production projects and may be applied in the Extreme North conditions. In terms of their characteristics, new steel grades are superior to the existing equivalents of Russian and foreign make, and at the same time, they make it possible to reduce costs by a quarter in the course of manufacture of equipment for LNG.
The development of the technology for commercial production of hot-rolled plates of new 0Н6 nickel steel grades began in March, 2019. The researchers of CNIITMASH worked in collaboration with the process engineers of JSC Ural Steel. In the autumn, the Urals Plant successfully carried out the heat and rolled the pilot batch of the plates with a thickness of 10 to 50 mm, and tested the heat treatment modes.
For Russian metallurgists, the implementation of the proposed new cryogenic steel grades production is an opportunity for highly profitable products to enter the market. ‘Use of 0Н6 steel will enable us to reduce the costs of cryogenic equipment production by 25% ensuring all required properties and safety and reliability requirements,’ says Уvgeniy Yakushev, Deputy Director of the Institute of Metallurgy and Machinery of CNIITMASH. ‘This is a very strong financial motivation for the application of the steel developed by the Institute in the national cryogenic machinery building.’
In international practice, cold-resistant low- and medium-alloyed nickel steels are widely used for the manufacture of tanks and equipment for LNG. Depending on the operating temperature, steel with a mass fraction of nickel from 1.5% to 10.0%, covering the temperature range from –80 ° C to –196 ° C, was put to use.