China put forward in 2020 “ The dual-carbon strategic goal clearly puts forward the overall task of reducing carbon emissions to cope with climate change and promote sustainable economic and social development. . In China's sustainable development strategy, the enterprise as the microcosmic main body of market economy, its function cannot be ignored. Sustainable development requires enterprises to achieve economic sustainability and environmental sustainability in the process of development. At the same time, in the era of digital economy, digital transformation has become a major trend in today's industries, and more and more enterprises are applying digital technologies such as cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence to industrial production and daily management. Therefore, digital transformation has become an important technical starting point for enterprises to achieve sustainable development. As “ The mother of industry ” The output of sulfuric acid has been used to measure the level of development of the national industry, and the digital transformation of the sulfuric acid industry is an inevitable trend of industry upgrading, but also the source of future competitiveness.

This paper explores the background of digital transformation in sulfuric acid industry, resource recycling in digital production and optimization of plant operation parameters. This paper discusses in detail how to use digital technology to help enterprises save energy and reduce emissions, realize interconnection and data sharing, help enterprises reduce costs and increase efficiency, and rely on industrial advantages to accelerate the construction of digital ecology of industrial chain partners in the sulfuric acid industry, open up data between upstream and downstream partners in the industrial chain, and realize resource sharing and business collaboration. It provides useful reference for the whole sulfuric acid industry to carry out digital transformation.

First, sulfuric acid industry status

1. Industry background

Sulfuric acid is one of the basic chemical raw materials, widely used in fertilizer, oil refining, textile dyes, battery manufacturing and other fields. Global sulfuric acid production capacity is sufficient, but the production and consumption pattern is affected by raw material supply, environmental protection policies, market demand fluctuations and other factors. As a major producer of sulfuric acid, China's output and export volume occupy the forefront of the world, among which Hubei province, as a major chemical province, has obvious scale advantages and cost-effectiveness in sulfuric acid production.

The future development of sulfuric acid industry will pay more attention to environmental protection and circular economy, and reduce the impact on the environment by upgrading the production process and improving the emission treatment technology. The rapid growth of new energy vehicles will drive up the demand for lithium-ion batteries, thereby increasing the demand for sulfuric acid. At the same time, with the promotion of agricultural modernization, the use of efficient fertilizers has increased, and the market demand for sulfuric acid as a key raw material will continue to be stable. In addition, exploring new application areas of sulfuric acid, such as for the synthesis of new materials, will be an important direction to promote the transformation and upgrading of the industry.

Overall, the demand for sulfuric acid at this stage is large, and how to produce high-quality sulfuric acid quickly and efficiently in the future is the top priority. The digitalization of sulfuric acid production is a goal that the industry hopes to achieve in the current price segment, and now through digitalization, the whole industry can achieve energy conservation and emission reduction, green production, automation and so on. Now they only have this expectation, but they are limited by the current ignorance of how to improve and the high cost of improvement, thus delaying the development.

2. Research significance

In the modern sulfuric acid production process, sulfuric acid as an energy plant in the chemical production process, the rest of the facilities supporting equipment, this situation leads to a high level of sulfuric acid production automation, but on how to further improve the automation has no place to stay, Li Zhenlai put forward a digital sulfuric acid solution for the above situation.

The goal of digital sulfuric acid is to digitize sulfuric acid plant management, production automation, and energy efficiency to achieve health visualization of the device, so that sulfur resources can be best used and scarce resources can be protected. At present, Lilly is mainly producing equipment conducive to automation and digitalization to slowly improve the production status from a small point of view (automatic condensing acid discharge device, water vapor leak detector, sulfuric acid concentration analyzer, intelligent sulfuric acid gun, etc., has helped many enterprises to solve production problems)

3. Industry status

In recent years, China's sulfuric acid industry has continued to promote transformation and upgrading and structural adjustment, backward equipment and backward production capacity have been eliminated, and the capacity utilization rate of enterprises with high efficiency and high quality has been further improved, and production capacity and output have shown steady growth. According to the data, as of the end of 2023, China's sulfuric acid production capacity of 134.7 million tons, an increase of 4.0%, capacity scale growth is still the same; Sulfuric acid production reached 134.7 million tons, an increase of 1.3% year-on-year and a record high [1].

From the perspective of regional distribution of production capacity, China's sulfuric acid industry production capacity distribution is more concentrated, mainly distributed in Yungui, Sichuan and Hubei and Shandong, Jiangsu, Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Anhui and other places, production capacity accounted for more than 20%. Among them, East China's sulfuric acid production capacity accounts for the largest proportion, up to 28%, most of which are distributed in Anhui, Jiangxi, Shandong, and basically smelting flue gas acid production.

More or less in the automatic production into the follow-up upgrade of the direction of consideration, digital sulfuric acid at this stage is a feeling the stones across the river, I hope that the follow-up of everyone to participate in how to solve the digital sulfuric acid building bricks.

Two, sulfuric acid industry digital transformation to adapt to the development of The Times

In today's fast-moving era, digital transformation has become a key way to increase efficiency and reduce environmental impact in all industries. As an important basic chemical raw material, sulfuric acid plays an indispensable role in many industrial fields, including fertilizer manufacturing, mineral processing, petroleum refining and so on. However, with the enhancement of global awareness of environmental protection, how to achieve green and sustainable development of sulfuric acid production has become an urgent problem to be solved. The application of digital sulfuric acid technology provides a new solution to this challenge, which can not only improve the efficiency of sulfuric acid production, but also effectively reduce the environmental impact and contribute to the realization of green sustainable development goals.

Problems such as high resource consumption and serious environmental pollution in the traditional sulfuric acid production process limit the healthy development of the industry and bring great pressure to the ecological environment. In order to cope with these challenges, the introduction of advanced information technology and automatic control means has become an inevitable choice. Digital sulfuric acid technology came into being under this background, it through the integration of software, big data, cloud computing and other modern information technology means to achieve intelligent management and optimization of sulfuric acid production process.

The digital transformation of the sulfuric acid industry is an inevitable trend in line with the historical development trend. With the enhancement of global awareness of environmental protection and the advancement of technology, the sulfuric acid industry is facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Digital transformation can not only improve production efficiency, reduce resource consumption and environmental pollution, but also optimize the entire production process through intelligent management and data analysis. Digital transformation also helps companies better understand changes in market demand and improve customer service quality and satisfaction.                    

In summary, digital transformation is not only a technological upgrade for the sulfuric acid industry, but also an important way to achieve sustainable development.

Three, digital sulfuric acid to help the sulfuric acid industry energy saving and emission reduction, improve the operation of the device

Although the sulfuric acid industry is not a heavily polluting industry, there are still more acidic wastewater, tail gas and unorganized gas discharged in the production, and various toxic and harmful components have significant pollution to the atmosphere and water sources. The sustainable development of the sulfuric acid industry requires a comprehensive consideration of environmental, economic and social factors.

Digital sulfuric acid mainly improves the healthy operation of the sulfuric acid industry, pollution emission, device automation, etc., and realizes the sustainable development of the sulfuric acid industry by realizing resource recycling, energy saving and emission reduction. Digital sulfuric acid has the functions of parameter query, material balance, process simulation, parameter analysis, problem query and so on. Parameter query function can meet the sulfuric acid industry practitioners real-time and convenient query various parameters, reduce the time to consult data; The material balance can input the operating parameters of its own device, the standard parameters of some process points can be obtained, and the parameter analysis can be carried out by comparing with its actual parameters. Question query is a question consultation realized by AI simulation of sulfuric acid knowledge. First of all, from the aspect of resource recycling, input the capacity parameters of the device (i.e., the amount of sulfur and SO2 gas concentration, etc.) digital sulfuric acid can analyze the subsequent material balance and obtain the accurate parameters of the operation of the device. Through parameter comparison, the gap between the actual output of the device and the standard output can be known. Ensure the safe and stable operation of the device. Secondly, from the aspect of energy saving and emission reduction, digital sulfuric acid will help to improve the automation degree of the device, and improve the operation capacity of a single device of sulfuric acid device by optimizing equipment with high energy consumption or traditional backward equipment; Optimize the parameter values and operating conditions of the sulfuric acid plant, reduce energy consumption, improve the utilization rate of raw materials, and reduce the content of pollutants in the tail gas.

In the future sulfuric acid industry will further increase the efforts of sustainable development, digital sulfuric acid will promote green development and circular economy.

Conclusion

Where the next step of the sulfuric acid industry will go, its development direction has been clearly visible. — That is to achieve the deep integration of industry and digital technology, and build a highly intelligent digital sulfuric acid control center. This means that we need to use advanced technologies such as cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence to optimize production processes and improve product quality in order to achieve cost reduction and efficiency and enhance our market competitiveness. When we put forward new demands for the sulfuric acid industry and seek new changes, we are correspondingly faced with problems such as the integration of cross-field technologies, the accuracy of instrument measurement, the difficulty of ensuring the safety of factory data and the cultivation of compound talents.

As the main body of the company, we need to focus on the integration and collaboration of cross-field technologies, promote technological innovation and application, in order to improve the efficiency of the overall system; Focus on the development and application of higher precision measuring instruments and technologies to ensure that the process control in the production process reaches the advanced level; Pay attention to the security of internal and external data in the factory, and establish sound data protection mechanisms and measures; Focus on cultivating interdisciplinary talents with deep professional knowledge and interdisciplinary ability to adapt to the new needs of industry development; Focusing on the cultivation of digital cultural atmosphere helps enterprises to transition smoothly to the digital era. As individuals, we need to adjust our mentality, actively adapt to the new changes and new looks of the sulfuric acid industry, accept new working models, and maintain a passion for learning new things and an open attitude, so as to steadily move forward in the wave of change.

We are in the midst of major changes unseen in a century. At this critical period, we should seize the opportunity and firmly step into the digital era. Despite the uncertainties and challenges of this trip, Lilly Technologies will uphold its mission, “ From the passion for the sulfuric acid industry, determined to use reliable measurement technology to achieve intelligent production of sulfuric acid industry, we want to help customers in the future digital economy era on the road to sustainable development and profitability. . The digital sulfuric acid APP is born to adapt to your digital transformation, escort your digital transformation, accelerate the construction of a new sulfuric acid industry chain, and gradually transition from the digital cornerstone to the network until the final intelligent goal. I believe that with our efforts, we will eventually be able to dial the clouds and see the dawn, realize industrial digitalization and digital industrialization as soon as possible, and jointly describe a new era of sulfuric acid industry!

References:

[1] Liao Kangcheng. Operation situation and Prospect of China's sulfuric acid industry [C]. Proceedings of the 2024 Sulfuric Acid Industry Annual Conference. 2024:23-42