This book provides a significant innovative and strategic expansion of the discipline's branch of metallurgical process engineering. It is the first to systematically propose a three-tier theoretical framework of metallurgy, comprising micro-scale fundamental metallurgy, specialized process metallurgy, and macro-scale dynamic metallurgy. This innovative theoretical structure breaks through the limitations of traditional metallurgical research, extending the scope of study from the atomic/molecular-level micro perspective and the procedure/device-level meso perspective to the macro perspective of overall manufacturing process optimization, achieving a crucial leap in the research domain of metallurgical engineering. The contemporary innovation and development of metallurgical science and engineering must be grounded in the organic integration and systematic combination of these three tiers of metallurgy, ultimately constructing a modern metallurgical knowledge system characterized by holism, dynamism, and engineering practicality through multi-scale, multi-dimensional knowledge nesting. This book is intended for engineers, researchers, and managers in the fields of metallurgical engineering, industrial design, and process engineering.

Yin Ruiyu is the founder of metallurgical process engineering. From the perspective of engineering science, he proposed the concept and theory of the overall optimization of the steel manufacturing process, which attracted the attention of the steel industry and vigorously promoted the integrated optimization of six key and common technologies such as continuous casting technology. Based on the research on the essence and overall structure optimization of the steel manufacturing process, it is proposed that steel mills should have three functions: steel product manufacturing, energy conversion, and waste disposal and resource utilization, which has played an important role in the technical decision-making of the construction plan of the new generation of steel bases.