- Contact Sales
- +852-800-931-122
About Henan Golden Stone Group
Henan Golden Stone Group is a comprehensive enterprise engaged in coal mining and washing, production and casting, and even certain food products. It has an annual production capacity of 2.5 million tons of clean coal, 1.3 million tons of metallurgical coke, 30,000 tons of casting machinery parts, 30,000 tons of quick-frozen food, and over 50 kinds of chemical products. Their products are sold to more than 20 provinces in China, the United States, India, Iran, and other international markets.
As we enter the digital era, the application of HUAWEI CLOUD AI to various industries has given Henan Golden Stone Group some ideas. Facing the challenges of industry transformation and upgrade, Henan Golden Stone Group decided to open a digital test field for their coking industry to improve the core competitiveness.
Challenges
Coking requires that large amounts of raw coal are blended in very specific proportions. Just preparing the raw materials can account for up to 80% of the total cost of production. Key factors that affect the preparation include the quality of the raw coal, the proportions, and the processes used. This means that reducing the cost of coal preparation will directly reduce the cost of the coke. Reducing costs is critical to staying profitable competitive.
The traditional coking process relies on a complex blend of different coals, and the ratios used are selected just based on experience. They are based on a long history of trial and error. Relying on experience alone results in a great deal of uncertainty. We need to rely heavily on professionals with years of experience, but where does this experience come from? It takes time and money to cultivate the required levels of expertise. Even if you have the appropriate expertise, personal experience is not well suited to the precise technical requirements of blending and refining coal into coke.
Different coal blending methods have evolved, growing more complex over time. Chinese coal production used to be based on five traditional parameters: A, S, V, G, and Y, but now there are more than 30 parameters that have to be managed, far too many to be effectively managed just based on memory and personal experience.
Solution
Henan Golden Stone Group and HUAWEI CLOUD have developed a brand-new intelligent coal distribution solution. Henan Golden Stone Group collects operational data, coke data, raw coal data, and sensor data that is collected from devices during production, and then uploads the data to HUAWEI CLOUD. HUAWEI CLOUD AI then intelligently analyzes the data to determine the best coal mix and provides open APIs for Henan Golden Stone Group to access the results.
Data security is critical for any enterprise that wants to complete digital transformation, and HUAWEI CLOUD provides highly secure object block storage (OBS) for Henan Golden Stone Group. OBS keeps their data safe and secure, in an efficient, easy-to-use manner. HUAWEI CLOUD even anonymizes and encrypts data before transmitting it to the one-stop AI development platform, ModelArts.
Powered by an advanced training architecture and powerful computing capabilities, the ModelArts platform analyzes historical data, applying advanced AI algorithms to create predictive models and develop improved coal mixes. With these models in hand, it is possible to predict the quality of the coke based on what coal and what proportions are used. It is also possible to determine the best blend to use for the raw materials on hand.
Benefits
After model evaluation, the average accuracy of the prediction models can be as high as 94%, and as more data is fed into the system, the models will continue to improve, and coke production will continue to grow more intelligent.
After deploying an intelligent coal preparation solution, the coking service of Henan Golden Stone Group managed to both reduce costs and improve quality.
In the past, it took over a day to evaluate the quality of the coke produced, but with the intelligent coal blending solution, coal quality can be monitored in real time. If the quality does not meet requirements during production, the proportion of raw coal can be adjusted on the fly, which reduces waste and improves quality.
With the HUAWEI CLOUD EI intelligent coal blending solution, the cost of production has been reduced by 20 - 70 yuan/ton depending on production conditions. Based on an output of 1.3 million tons per year, Henan Golden Stone Group can save at least 30 million yuan per year, which is a tremendous competitive boost.
There are other, less visible benefits too, benefits to the environment and to society as a whole. Coking enterprises have always been among the biggest industrial polluters, mostly in terms of airborne particulate matter and wastewater, both serious environmental threats that endanger our health and wellbeing. The pollution problem is particularly severe in coking enterprises using older, more out of date production methods. The HUAWEI CLOUD EI intelligent coal preparation solution helps enterprises improve resource utilization and reduce waste. Less waste means less pollution.
