Stainless steel is currently used in the petrochemical industry are: for tanks, stainless steel plate heat exchanger shell; a reactor tower housing stainless steel clad plate; a tube, material handling, heat exchanger tubes of stainless steel seamless tube; stainless steel forgings, stainless steel internals, etc. Petrochemical industry mainly for stainless steel corrosion resistant requirements, including chlorides, sulphides and other salts corrosion; high temperature and low temperature and so on. And for crude oil exploration and development of stainless steel it requires anti-carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide corrosion properties. In the selection of species, generally 304 mainly in the 6-22 mm thickness steel, mainly used in the construction of polymer tanks, heat exchangers, shell. In addition, part of the reactor internals using 316L, TP347, etc., the thickness of 2-6 mm. The delivery of glacial acetic acid liquid vehicle (rail car) general use 304 and 316 plate.
    For urea plant is generally used 316L. China's petrochemical industry in the use of a large amount of stainless steel is about 70,000 tons, of which steel plate (8 mm) 10,000 tons, 15,000 tons of stainless steel clad plate, stainless steel seamless pipe 40,000 tons, 5,000 tons of stainless steel welded pipe.
    Made of stainless steel and petrochemical fields currently in use is not widespread, mainly due to the formation of domestic enterprises have yet to meet the standards of China's chemical development of oil needs; plates, tubes, forging, welding materials is not complete, stainless steel production set distance is not complete; the petrochemical industry needs the thick wide plate, large diameter, thick-walled steel pipe production capacity is very limited; unstable product quality stainless steel tube; development and production of new varieties is still unable to meet the development of petrochemical industry, and so on. Because of limitations in the stainless steel variety, quality, specifications, etc., the petrochemical industry needs to have a lot of stainless steel is not available. Such as width of 4 m heavy plate China is still unable to produce. So there are many forms of stainless steel equipment is imported. Other domestic companies in product development and overseas business is still lagging behind compared to, for example, some of the stainless steel business in Europe every year a dozen new varieties introduced stainless steel, and our business in this area is still not enough.
    China's petrochemical industry development of stainless steel products have higher requirements in the future. China in the future oil and gas exploration and development efforts will increase further, and the use of carbon dioxide reinjection underground ways to reduce CO2 emissions and enhanced oil recovery. Meanwhile, China's natural gas exploration and development efforts will be greater than the crude oil exploration and development, and to develop the high-sulfur, carbon dioxide areas (hydrogen sulfide content of 16% carbon dioxide content of about 8%). And a drilling depth will be further deepened, most land will exceed 8000 meters deep. In the petrochemical industry, to achieve large-scale petrochemical plant scale. Ethylene production single set of devices will exceed 1 million tons, refining single plant more than 15 million tons of refining capacity, purified terephthalic acid (PTA) production capacity of a single plant over 800 thousand tons, stainless steel tanks toward large-scale direction. These are all stainless steel product specifications and varieties put forward new demands.
    Because natural gas needs at 160 degrees Celsius below zero conditions in order to achieve liquefaction, storage and transport facilities which require stainless steel, so the next few years in China's coastal areas is about to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) system also requires a lot of stainless steel. Since LNG projects in coastal areas will continue to build, we can expect this aspect of stainless steel consumption will be very large.