Historical development and future prospects of pipeline steel

Abstract

Pipeline transportation is the safest and most economical way for long-distance transportation of oil and gas.In the past 40 years, the development and application of pipeline steel have been improved rapidly with the increasing demand for pipeline capacity and efficiency, as well as the progress of iron and steel metallurgy manufacturing technology and equipment. In view of these characteristics, the development history of pipeline steel was described from the aspects of application demand driving, alloy composition design, manufacturing process and equipment, microstructure, mechanical properties, etc. Specifically, the contents included the optimization of chemical composition design with low-carbon microalloying and good weldability, the development of high-purity metallurgy and Thermomechanical Control Process(TMCP) technology, the change of microstructure characteristics of pipeline steels such as pearlite-ferrite, acicular ferrite,ferrite-bainite duplex or multiphase, and ultra-low carbon bainite, and the development of pipeline steel with high strength,high toughness and high deformation capacity. On the basis of summarizing the historical development of pipeline steel,the technical development trend and direction of pipeline steel in the future were discussed in view of the construction requirements of new energy transportation pipelines with ultra-large transportation capacity, more complex service conditions and transportation media, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide in combination with the latest technological development frontier of the iron and steel industry.

Keywords

• pipeline steel
• low carbon microalloying
• thermomechanical control process(tmcp)
• ultra-low carbon bainite
• ultra-large transportation capacity
• new energy pipeline