Steelmaking

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Steel mill with two arc furnaces.

Steelmaking is the process for producing steel from iron ore and scrap. In steelmaking,
impurities such as nitrogen, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur and excess carbon are removed from the
raw iron, and alloying elements such as manganese, nickel, chromium and vanadium are added
to produce different grades of steel. Limiting dissolved gases such as nitrogen and oxygen, and
entrained impurities (termed "inclusions") in the steel is also important to ensure the quality of
the products cast from the liquid steel.[1] Steelmaking has existed for millennia, but it was not
commercialized until the 19th century. The ancient craft process of steelmaking was the crucible
process. In the 1850s and 1860s, the Bessemer process and the Siemens-Martin process turned
steelmaking into a heavy industry. Today there are two major commercial processes for making
steel, namely basic oxygen steelmaking, which has liquid pig-iron from the blast furnace and
scrap steel as the main feed materials, and electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking, which uses
scrap steel or direct reduced iron (DRI) as the main feed materials. Oxygen steelmaking is
fuelled predominantly by the exothermic nature of the reactions inside the vessel where as in
EAF steelmaking, electrical energy is used to melt the solid scrap and/or DRI materials. In recent
times, EAF steelmaking technology has evolved closer to oxygen steelmaking as more chemical
energy is introduced into the process.[2]

Contents

1 History

2 Modern processes
o 2.1 Primary steelmaking
o 2.2 Secondary steelmaking
o 2.3 HIsarna steelmaking

3 See also

4 References

5 External links

History

Bethlehem Steel (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania facility pictured) was one of the world's largest
manufacturers of steel before its 2003 closure.
Steelmaking has played a crucial role development of modern technological societies. Cast iron
is a hard brittle material that is difficult to work, whereas steel is malleable, relatively easily
formed and a versatile material. For much of human history, steel has only been made in small
quantities. Since the invention of the Bessemer process in the 19th century and subsequent
technological developments in injection technology and process control, mass production of steel
has become an integral part of the world's economy and a key indicator of technological
development.[3] The earliest means of producing steel was in a bloomery.
Early modern methods of producing steel were often labour-intensive and highly skilled arts.
See:

finery forge, in which the German finery process could be managed to produce steel.

blister steel and crucible steel.

An important aspect of the Industrial Revolution was the development of large-scale methods of
producing forgeable metal (bar iron or steel). The puddling furnace was initially a means of
producing wrought iron, but was later applied to steel production.
The real revolution in steelmaking only began at the end of the 1850s when the Bessemer
process became the first successful method of steelmaking in quantity, followed by the openhearth furnace.

Modern processes
Modern steelmaking processes can be broken into two categories: primary and secondary
steelmaking. Primary steelmaking involves converting liquid iron from a blast furnace and steel
scrap into steel via basic oxygen steelmaking or melting scrap steel and/or direct reduced iron
(DRI) in an electric arc furnace. Secondary steelmaking involves refining of the crude steel

before casting and the various operations are normally carried out in ladles. In secondary
metallurgy, alloying agents are added, dissolved gases in the steel are lowered, and inclusions are
removed or altered chemically to ensure that high-quality steel is produced after casting.[4]

Primary steelmaking
Main article: Basic oxygen steelmaking
Basic oxygen steelmaking is a method of primary steelmaking in which carbon-rich molten pig
iron is made into steel. Blowing oxygen through molten pig iron lowers the carbon content of the
alloy and changes it into steel. The process is known as basic due to the chemical nature of the
refractoriescalcium oxide and magnesium oxidethat line the vessel to withstand the high
temperature and corrosive nature of the molten metal and slag in the vessel. The slag chemistry
of the process is also controlled to ensure that impurities such as silicon and phosphorus are
removed from the metal.
The process was developed in 1948 by Robert Durrer and commercialized in 195253 by
Austrian VOEST and AMG.[citation needed] The LD converter, named after the Austrian towns of
Linz and Donawitz (a district of Leoben) is a refined version of the Bessemer converter where
blowing of air is replaced with blowing oxygen. It reduced capital cost of the plants, time of
smelting, and increased labor productivity. Between 1920 and 2000, labour requirements in the
industry decreased by a factor of 1,000, from more than 3 worker-hours per tonne to just 0.003.
The vast majority of steel manufactured in the world is produced using the basic oxygen furnace;
in 2011, it accounted for 70% of global steel output. Modern furnaces will take a charge of iron
of up to 350 tons and convert it into steel in less than 40 minutes, compared to 1012 hours in an
open hearth furnace.[5]
Electric arc furnace steelmaking is the manufacture of steel from scrap or direct reduced iron
melted by electric arcs. In an electric arc furnace, a batch of steel ("heat") may be started by
loading scrap or direct reduced iron into the furnace, sometimes with a "hot heel" (molten steel
from a previous heat). Gas burners may be used to assist with the melt down of the scrap pile in
the furnace. As in basic oxygen steelmaking, fluxes are also added to protect the lining of the
vessel and help improve the removal of impurities. Electric arc furnace steelmaking typically
uses furnaces of capacity around 100 tonnes that produce steel every 40 to 50 minutes for further
processing.[6]
By-product gases from the steel making process can be used to generate electricity through the
use of reciprocating gas engines.[7]

Secondary steelmaking
Secondary steelmaking is most commonly performed in ladles and often referred to as ladle
(metallurgy). Some of the operations performed in ladles include de-oxidation (or "killing"),
vacuum degassing, alloy addition, inclusion removal, inclusion chemistry modification, desulphurisation and homogenisation. It is now common to perform ladle metallurgical operations
in gas stirred ladles with electric arc heating in the lid of the furnace. Tight control of ladle

metallurgy is associated with producing high grades of steel in which the tolerances in chemistry
and consistency are narrow.[8]

HIsarna steelmaking
Main article: HIsarna steelmaking process
The HIsarna steelmaking process is a process for primary steelmaking in which iron ore is
processed almost directly into steel. The process is based around a new type of blast furnace
called a Cyclone Converter Furnace, which makes it possible to skip the process of
manufacturing pig iron pellets that is necessary for the basic oxygen steelmaking process.
Without the necessity for this preparatory step the HIsarna process is more energy-efficient and
has a lower carbon footprint than traditional steelmaking processes.

See also

History of the steel industry (18501970)

History of the steel industry (1970present)

Argon oxygen decarburization

Decarburization

FINEX

Flodin process

Steel mill

Carbon Additive

References
1.

B. Deo and R. Boom, Fundamentals of Steelmaking Metallurgy, Prentice and

Hall, 1993

2.

E.T. Turkdoagn, Fundamentals of Steelmaking, IOM, 1996

3.

S. Sass, The Substance of Civilization, Arcade Publishing, 1998

4.

A. Gosh, Secondary Steelmaking, Principles and Applications, CRC Press, 2001

5.

R. Fruehan, The Making, Shaping and Treating of Steel, 11th Edition, AIST, 1999

6.

R. Fruehan, The Making, Shaping and Treating of Steel, 11th Edition, AIST, 1999

7.

Steel Production Gas to Power, www.clarke-energy.com

8.

A. Gosh, Secondary Metallurgy, Principles and Applications, CRC Press, 2001

External links

The short film The Drama of Steel (1946) is available for free download at the Internet
Archive

U.S. Steel Gary Works Photograph Collection, 1906-1971

"Steel For The Tools For Victory" , December 1943, Popular Science large detailed
article with numerous illustrations and cutaways on the modern basics of making steel