"I announce that the world's first AI+5G pure electric locomotive intelligent hot metal transportation system first pure electric locomotive has been put into use!"

On January 30, Zhang Junjie, executive deputy general manager of Zhongtian Iron and Steel Group (Nantong) Co., Ltd., officially announced this A message. It means that the company has made big progress in the construction of Zhongtian Nantong’s smart hot metal transportation system.

Project leader Wu Shenggang said that the system is a benchmark project that vigorously implements the "double carbon" goal and promotes the in-depth integration of digital intelligence technology and steel logistics scenarios. The system mainly consists of a hot metal dispatching system, a locomotive dispatching system, an equipment support system, and a data analysis platform to build an "AI decision-making brain." It creates a new paradigm for the promotion and application of large-scale driverless transformation of new energy-pure electric locomotives in steel companies.

Compared with traditional hot metal transportation, the smart hot metal transportation system uses locomotives loaded with intelligent equipment as the carrier. It takes the locomotive driverless system as the core, supplemented by environmental perception systems, wireless communication systems, and automatic power systems. Theoretically, it can accurately and efficiently identify obstacles, realize all-weather intelligent perception of the locomotive operating environment, improve all links' coordination and connection efficiency, and liberate people from high temperature, noise, and dusty working environments. This project can make employees' working environment safer, more efficient, and more environmentally friendly.

It is reported that Zhongtian Nantong Company will invest in 10 AI+5G driverless pure electric locomotives, which will have all-weather full-process driverless for hot metal transportation, integrated positioning tracking, precise parking alignment control, automatic picking/hooking, automatic parking, automatic functions such as charging and automatic opening and closing of bag covers, a single locomotive can continuously run no less than 45 kilometers per day (remaining power is no less than 30%). The daily operating mode is for a single locomotive to tow no less than two hot metal tankers, with a maximum towing capacity of 1,200 tons.

Xu Dongsheng, director of the iron smelting plant, said that it is expected that all ten pure electric locomotives will be delivered by the end of July this year, truly realizing the efficient operation mode of "unmanned transportation of molten iron and intelligent dispatching of molten iron," significantly reducing the cost of molten iron transportation, and vividly practicing data—intelligent, green and low-carbon development concept.

Zhongtian Nantong Company adheres to the design concept of "large-scale, efficient, intensive, green and intelligent" and by the strategic goals of "first-class equipment, first-class environmental protection, first-class brand, first-class management, and first-class efficiency," with the help of intelligent Equipment and new generation information technology have been used to create a national-level "green factory." The salt crystallization system, digital control center, rooftop distributed photovoltaic projects, etc., have been put into use successively, laying a solid foundation for the sustainable development of the enterprise. In the future, Nantong Company will continue to innovate more intelligent and green technologies to help the group write a "new answer sheet" for high-quality development and continue to make more contributions to the transformation and upgrading of my country's steel industry.