The air, water, energy (AWE) market is over US$ 2 trillion. Tens of billions of dollars of stainless sheets, castings, and other stainless forms are purchased by the companies making the products used to move and treat air and water and create energy.
Stainless steel suppliers are discovering rapid changes in the market. The two major areas of change comprise methods to determine the stainless choice and the individuals who make that evaluation.
By Robert McIlvaine, President and Founder – The McIlvaine Company
Factors Influencing Changes in the Stainless Steel Market
Rapid changes in the stainless steel market are as a result of the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and remote operations and maintenance (O&M). Product performance monitors will continually assess corrosion, leakage, and other parameters that provide very precise information on the selection of a particular steel grade. This will create better choices and reward suppliers who offer them.
The mix of decision makers is quickly changing, and stainless suppliers will need to adjust. The role of the operator will shrink as the number of operating personnel needed will be reduced with remote O&M assisting the decision maker. The decisions could be potentially made by factory, automation, system, and product suppliers. Stainless decisions for valves, pumps, scrubbers, and other AWE products are mostly made by operators.
The Evolution of Stainless Selection
In the future, stainless selections will be increasingly made by analysis obtained from product performance historians. They can be incorporated in product software or in software developed by automation companies with comprehensive AI where the factors affecting stainless decisions can be better evaluated.
In the 1990’s, some stainless-steel suppliers recommended a switch from C276 to 2205 based on the cost and success of test specimens. Small-scale commercial results were positive. Hundreds of millions of dollars of scrubbers with 2205 stainless were installed. Within a few months, there was significant corrosion. Investigation revealed that the problem was the buildup of gypsum on the internal shell. Very low pH conditions were created in slurry trapped inside the gypsum build up. This was a problem created by process chemistry failures, but it was endemic. The result was hundreds of millions of dollars for high alloy liners.
Stainless, scrubber, systems, and automation companies will be competing in the future as the resource for stainless selection for flue gas desulphurization (FGD) scrubbers. Scrubber suppliers will argue that they are the only ones who will anticipate problems such as crevice corrosion. FGD system suppliers will argue that they are the ones who best understand the conditions at each point in the system. Automation companies who are monitoring conditions in hundreds of scrubber can argue that they are the most reliable resource. Major stainless-steel companies can argue that they are the ones with greatest insight. But all the groups need as much access as possible to the comprehensive performance monitoring that is being continuously generated.
AWE and the Future of Stainless Steel
In summary, the future of stainless steel in AWE products will be determined by champions who are in competition. If it were a checkers game, an independent conclusion on the stainless type and market size could be made. But the reality is the best selection may not be clear and each group will compete to champion their version. So, the market forecasting will be a chess game with the success of various champion groups needed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert McIlvaine is the CEO of the McIlvaine Company, which publishes Industrial Valves: World Markets. He was a pollution control company executive prior to 1974 when he founded the present company. McIlvaine oversees a staff of 30 people in the U.S. and China.