1.
Steelmaking
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Steelmaking is the process for producing steel from iron ore and scrap. Limiting dissolved gases such as nitrogen and oxygen, and entrained impurities in the steel is also important to ensure the quality of the products cast from the liquid steel, 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. In recent times, EAF steelmaking technology has evolved closer to oxygen steelmaking as more energy is introduced into the process. 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 history, steel has only been made in small quantities. 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, an important aspect of the Industrial Revolution was the development of large-scale methods of producing forgeable metal. The puddling furnace was initially a means of producing wrought iron, 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 open-hearth furnace. Modern steelmaking processes can be broken into two categories, primary and secondary steelmaking, secondary steelmaking involves refining of the crude steel before casting and the various operations are normally carried out in ladles. Basic oxygen steelmaking is a method of 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, 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 1952–53 by Austrian VOEST, the LD converter, named after the Austrian towns of Linz and Donawitz 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, 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, 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 may be started by loading scrap or direct reduced iron into the furnace, 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, electric arc furnace steelmaking typically uses furnaces of capacity around 100 tonnes that produce steel every 40 to 50 minutes for further processing
2.
Pig iron
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Pig iron is an intermediate product of the iron industry. Pig iron is made by smelting iron ore into an ingot of impure high carbon-content iron in a blast furnace as an ingredient for further processing steps. When the metal had cooled and hardened, the ingots were simply broken from the runner. As pig iron is intended for remelting, the size of the ingots. Smelting and producing pig iron and other products was known to the Ancient Egyptians. The Roman Empire and later the Muslim caliphates of the Middle Ages inherited and refined these technologies, because of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Western Europe did not rediscover the process until the Late Middle Ages. The phase transition of the iron into liquid in the furnace was an avoided phenomenon, the Chinese were also making pig iron by the later Zhou Dynasty. Traditionally pig iron was worked into wrought iron in forges, later puddling furnaces. In these processes, pig iron is melted and a current of air is directed over it while it is stirred or agitated. This causes the dissolved impurities to be thoroughly oxidized, an intermediate product of puddling is known as refined pig iron, finers metal, or refined iron. Pig iron can also be used to produce gray iron and this is achieved by remelting pig iron, often along with substantial quantities of steel and scrap iron, removing undesirable contaminants, adding alloys, and adjusting the carbon content. Some pig iron grades are suitable for producing ductile iron and these are high purity pig irons and depending on the grade of ductile iron being produced these pig irons may be low in the elements silicon, manganese, sulfur and phosphorus. These types of pig irons are used to all the elements in a ductile iron charge which may be harmful to the ductile iron process. Earlier processes for this included the finery forge, the furnace, the Bessemer process. Modern pig casting machines produce stick pigs, which break into smaller 4–10 kg piglets at discharge
3.
Steel
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Steel is an alloy of iron and other elements, primarily carbon, that is widely used in construction and other applications because of its high tensile strength and low cost. Steels base metal is iron, which is able to take on two forms, body centered cubic and face centered cubic, depending on its temperature. It is the interaction of those allotropes with the elements, primarily carbon. In the body-centred cubic arrangement, there is an atom in the centre of each cube. Carbon, other elements, and inclusions within iron act as hardening agents that prevent the movement of dislocations that otherwise occur in the lattices of iron atoms. The carbon in steel alloys may contribute up to 2. 1% of its weight. Steels strength compared to pure iron is possible at the expense of irons ductility. With the invention of the Bessemer process in the mid-19th century and this was followed by Siemens-Martin process and then Gilchrist-Thomas process that refined the quality of steel. With their introductions, mild steel replaced wrought iron, further refinements in the process, such as basic oxygen steelmaking, largely replaced earlier methods by further lowering the cost of production and increasing the quality of the product. Today, steel is one of the most common materials in the world and it is a major component in buildings, infrastructure, tools, ships, automobiles, machines, appliances, and weapons. Modern steel is generally identified by various grades defined by assorted standards organizations, the noun steel originates from the Proto-Germanic adjective stakhlijan, which is related to stakhla. The carbon content of steel is between 0. 002% and 2. 1% by weight for plain iron–carbon alloys and these values vary depending on alloying elements such as manganese, chromium, nickel, iron, tungsten, carbon and so on. Basically, steel is an alloy that does not undergo eutectic reaction. In contrast, cast iron does undergo eutectic reaction, too little carbon content leaves iron quite soft, ductile, and weak. Carbon contents higher than those of steel make an alloy, commonly called pig iron, while iron alloyed with carbon is called carbon steel, alloy steel is steel to which other alloying elements have been intentionally added to modify the characteristics of steel. Common alloying elements include, manganese, nickel, chromium, molybdenum, boron, titanium, vanadium, tungsten, cobalt, and niobium. Additional elements are important in steel, phosphorus, sulfur, silicon, and traces of oxygen, nitrogen, and copper. Alloys with a higher than 2. 1% carbon content, depending on other element content, cast iron is not malleable even when hot, but it can be formed by casting as it has a lower melting point than steel and good castability properties
4.
Oxygen
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Oxygen is a chemical element with symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the group on the periodic table and is a highly reactive nonmetal. By mass, oxygen is the third-most abundant element in the universe, after hydrogen, at standard temperature and pressure, two atoms of the element bind to form dioxygen, a colorless and odorless diatomic gas with the formula O2. This is an important part of the atmosphere and diatomic oxygen gas constitutes 20. 8% of the Earths atmosphere, additionally, as oxides the element makes up almost half of the Earths crust. Most of the mass of living organisms is oxygen as a component of water, conversely, oxygen is continuously replenished by photosynthesis, which uses the energy of sunlight to produce oxygen from water and carbon dioxide. Oxygen is too reactive to remain a free element in air without being continuously replenished by the photosynthetic action of living organisms. Another form of oxygen, ozone, strongly absorbs ultraviolet UVB radiation, but ozone is a pollutant near the surface where it is a by-product of smog. At low earth orbit altitudes, sufficient atomic oxygen is present to cause corrosion of spacecraft, the name oxygen was coined in 1777 by Antoine Lavoisier, whose experiments with oxygen helped to discredit the then-popular phlogiston theory of combustion and corrosion. One of the first known experiments on the relationship between combustion and air was conducted by the 2nd century BCE Greek writer on mechanics, Philo of Byzantium. In his work Pneumatica, Philo observed that inverting a vessel over a burning candle, Philo incorrectly surmised that parts of the air in the vessel were converted into the classical element fire and thus were able to escape through pores in the glass. Many centuries later Leonardo da Vinci built on Philos work by observing that a portion of air is consumed during combustion and respiration, Oxygen was discovered by the Polish alchemist Sendivogius, who considered it the philosophers stone. In the late 17th century, Robert Boyle proved that air is necessary for combustion, English chemist John Mayow refined this work by showing that fire requires only a part of air that he called spiritus nitroaereus. From this he surmised that nitroaereus is consumed in both respiration and combustion, Mayow observed that antimony increased in weight when heated, and inferred that the nitroaereus must have combined with it. Accounts of these and other experiments and ideas were published in 1668 in his work Tractatus duo in the tract De respiratione. Robert Hooke, Ole Borch, Mikhail Lomonosov, and Pierre Bayen all produced oxygen in experiments in the 17th and the 18th century but none of them recognized it as a chemical element. This may have been in part due to the prevalence of the philosophy of combustion and corrosion called the phlogiston theory, which was then the favored explanation of those processes. Established in 1667 by the German alchemist J. J. Becher, one part, called phlogiston, was given off when the substance containing it was burned, while the dephlogisticated part was thought to be its true form, or calx. The fact that a substance like wood gains overall weight in burning was hidden by the buoyancy of the combustion products
5.
Alloy
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An alloy is a mixture of metals or a mixture of a metal and another element. Alloys are defined by a metallic bonding character, an alloy may be a solid solution of metal elements or a mixture of metallic phases. Intermetallic compounds are alloys with a stoichiometry and crystal structure. Zintl phases are sometimes considered alloys depending on bond types. Alloys are used in a variety of applications. In some cases, a combination of metals may reduce the overall cost of the material while preserving important properties, in other cases, the combination of metals imparts synergistic properties to the constituent metal elements such as corrosion resistance or mechanical strength. Examples of alloys are steel, solder, brass, pewter, duralumin, bronze, the alloy constituents are usually measured by mass. Alloys are usually classified as substitutional or interstitial alloys, depending on the arrangement that forms the alloy. They can be classified as homogeneous, or heterogeneous or intermetallic. An alloy is a mixture of elements, which forms an impure substance that retains the characteristics of a metal. Alloys are made by mixing two or more elements, at least one of which is a metal and this is usually called the primary metal or the base metal, and the name of this metal may also be the name of the alloy. The other constituents may or may not be metals but, when mixed with the base, they will be soluble. The mechanical properties of alloys will often be different from those of its individual constituents. A metal that is very soft, such as aluminium, can be altered by alloying it with another soft metal. Although both metals are soft and ductile, the resulting aluminium alloy will have much greater strength. Adding a small amount of carbon to iron trades its great ductility for the greater strength of an alloy called steel. Due to its strength, but still substantial toughness, and its ability to be greatly altered by heat treatment, steel is one of the most useful. By adding chromium to steel, its resistance to corrosion can be enhanced, creating stainless steel, while adding silicon will alter its electrical characteristics, producing silicon steel
6.
Carbon steel
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The term carbon steel may also be used in reference to steel which is not stainless steel, in this use carbon steel may include alloy steels. As the carbon percentage content rises, steel has the ability to become harder and stronger through heat treating, however, regardless of the heat treatment, a higher carbon content reduces weldability. In carbon steels, the carbon content lowers the melting point. Mild steel, also known as steel and Low carbon steel. It is now the most common form of steel because its price is relatively low while it provides material properties that are acceptable for many applications, mild steel contains approximately 0. 05–0. 25% carbon making it malleable and ductile. Mild steel has a low tensile strength, but it is cheap and easy to form. It is often used large quantities of steel are needed. The density of steel is approximately 7.85 g/cm3. Low-carbon steels suffer from yield-point runout where the material has two yield points, the first yield point is higher than the second and the yield drops dramatically after the upper yield point. If a low-carbon steel is only stressed to some point between the upper and lower yield point then the surface develop Lüder bands, low-carbon steels contain less carbon than other steels and are easier to cold-form, making them easier to handle. Carbon steels which can successfully undergo heat-treatment have a content in the range of 0. 30–1. 70% by weight. Trace impurities of other elements can have a significant effect on the quality of the resulting steel. Trace amounts of sulfur in particular make the steel red-short, that is, brittle, low-alloy carbon steel, such as A36 grade, contains about 0. 05% sulfur and melts around 1, 426–1,538 °C. Manganese is often added to improve the hardenability of low-carbon steels and these additions turn the material into a low-alloy steel by some definitions, but AISIs definition of carbon steel allows up to 1. 65% manganese by weight. Carbon steel is broken down into four classes based on content,0.05 to 0. 25% carbon content. Balances ductility and strength and has good resistance, used for large parts, forging. Very strong, used for springs, swords, and high-strength wires, steels that can be tempered to great hardness. Used for special purposes like knives, axles or punches, most steels with more than 2. 5% carbon content are made using powder metallurgy
7.
Flux (metallurgy)
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In metallurgy, a flux is a chemical cleaning agent, flowing agent, or purifying agent. Fluxes may have more than one function at a time and they are used in both extractive metallurgy and metal joining. Some of the earliest known fluxes were carbonate of soda, potash, charcoal, coke, borax, lime, lead sulfide, iron ore was also used as a flux in the smelting of copper. As cleaning agents, fluxes facilitate soldering, brazing, and welding by removing oxidation from the metals to be joined, the slag is a liquid mixture of ash, flux, and other impurities. This reduction of slag viscosity with temperature, increasing the flow of slag in smelting, is the origin of the word flux in metallurgy. Fluxes are also used in foundries for removing impurities from molten nonferrous metals such as aluminium, in high-temperature metal joining processes, the primary purpose of flux is to prevent oxidation of the base and filler materials. Tin-lead solder attaches very well to copper, but poorly to the oxides of copper. Flux is a substance which is inert at room temperature. Additionally, flux allows solder to flow easily on the piece rather than forming beads as it would otherwise. In some applications molten flux also serves as a heat transfer medium, fluxes for soft soldering are typically of organic nature, though inorganic fluxes, usually based on halogenides and/or acids, are also used in non-electronics applications. Fluxes for brazing operate at higher temperatures and are therefore mostly inorganic. Organic fluxes typically consist of four components, Activators - chemicals disrupting/dissolving the metal oxides. Their role is to expose unoxidized, easily wettable metal surface and aid soldering by other means, highly active fluxes contain chemicals that are corrosive at room temperature. The compounds used include metal halides, hydrochloric acid, phosphoric acid, Salts of mineral acids with amines are also used as aggressive activators. Aggressive fluxes typically facilitate corrosion, require careful removal, and are unsuitable for finer work, Activators for fluxes for soldering and brazing aluminium often contain fluorides. Milder activators begin to react with oxides only at elevated temperature, typical compounds used are carboxylic acids and sometimes amino acids. Some milder fluxes also contain halides or organohalides, vehicles - high-temperature tolerant chemicals in the form of non-volatile liquids or solids with suitable melting point, they are generally liquid at soldering temperatures. Solid vehicles tend to be based on natural or modified rosin or natural or synthetic resins, water-soluble organic fluxes tend to contain vehicles based on high-boiling polyols - glycols, diethylene glycol and higher polyglycols, polyglycol-based surfactants and glycerol
8.
Calcium oxide
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Calcium oxide, commonly known as quicklime or burnt lime, is a widely used chemical compound. It is a white, caustic, alkaline, crystalline solid at room temperature, the broadly used term lime connotes calcium-containing inorganic materials, in which carbonates, oxides and hydroxides of calcium, silicon, magnesium, aluminium, and iron predominate. By contrast, quicklime specifically applies to the chemical compound calcium oxide. Calcium oxide that survives processing without reacting in building such as cement is called free lime. Both it and a chemical derivative are important commodity chemicals, Calcium oxide is usually made by the thermal decomposition of materials, such as limestone or seashells, that contain calcium carbonate in a lime kiln. This is accomplished by heating the material to above 825 °C, annual worldwide production of quicklime is around 283 million tonnes. China is by far the worlds largest producer, with a total of around 170 million tonnes per year, the United States is the next largest, with around 20 million tonnes per year. Approximately 1.8 t of limestone is required per 1.0 t of quicklime, quicklime has a high affinity for water and is a more efficient desiccant than silica gel. The reaction of quicklime with water is associated with an increase in volume by a factor of at least 2.5, the major use of quicklime is in the Basic oxygen steelmaking process. Its usage varies from about 30–50 kg/t of steel, the quicklime neutralizes the acidic oxides, SiO2, Al2O3, and Fe2O3, to produce a basic molten slag. Ground quicklime is used in the production of aerated concrete blocks, quicklime and hydrated lime can considerably increase the load carrying capacity of clay-containing soils. They do this by reacting with finely divided silica and alumina to produce calcium silicates and aluminates, small quantities of quicklime are used in other processes, e. g. the production of glass, calcium aluminate cement, and organic chemicals. The hydrate can be reconverted to quicklime by removing the water by heating it to redness to reverse the hydration reaction, one litre of water combines with approximately 3.1 kilograms of quicklime to give calcium hydroxide plus 3.54 MJ of energy. This process can be used to provide a convenient portable source of heat, light, When quicklime is heated to 2,400 °C, it emits an intense glow. This form of illumination is known as a limelight, and was used broadly in theatrical productions prior to the invention of electric lighting, cement, Calcium oxide is a key ingredient for the process of making cement. As a cheap and widely available alkali, about 50% of the total quicklime production is converted to calcium hydroxide before use. Both quick- and hydrated lime are used in the treatment of drinking water, petroleum industry, Water detection pastes contain a mix of calcium oxide and phenolphthalein. Should this paste come into contact with water in a storage tank
9.
Dolomite
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Dolomite is an anhydrous carbonate mineral composed of calcium magnesium carbonate, ideally CaMg2. The term is used for a sedimentary carbonate rock composed mostly of the mineral dolomite. An alternative name used for the dolomitic rock type is dolostone. Most probably the mineral dolomite was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1768, nicolas-Théodore de Saussure first named the mineral in March 1792. The mineral dolomite crystallizes in the trigonal-rhombohedral system and it forms white, tan, gray, or pink crystals. Dolomite is a carbonate, having an alternating structural arrangement of calcium and magnesium ions. It does not rapidly dissolve or effervesce in dilute hydrochloric acid as calcite does, solid solution exists between dolomite, the iron-dominant ankerite and the manganese-dominant kutnohorite. Small amounts of iron in the give the crystals a yellow to brown tint. Manganese substitutes in the structure also up to three percent MnO. A high manganese content gives the crystals a rosy pink color, lead, zinc, and cobalt also substitute in the structure for magnesium. The mineral dolomite is closely related to huntite Mg3Ca4, because dolomite can be dissolved by slightly acidic water, areas of dolomite are important as aquifers and contribute to karst terrain formation. Modern dolomite formation has been found to occur under conditions in supersaturated saline lagoons along the Rio de Janeiro coast of Brazil, namely, Lagoa Vermelha. It is often thought that dolomite will develop only with the help of sulfate-reducing bacteria, however, low-temperature dolomite may occur in natural environments rich in organic matter and microbial cell surfaces. This occurs as a result of magnesium complexation by carboxyl groups associated with organic matter, vast deposits of dolomite are present in the geological record, but the mineral is relatively rare in modern environments. Reproducible, inorganic low-temperature syntheses of dolomite and magnesite were published for the first time in 1999, the general principle governing the course of this irreversible geochemical reaction has been coined breaking Ostwalds step rule. There is some evidence for an occurrence of dolomite. One example is that of the formation of dolomite in the bladder of a Dalmatian dog. In 2015, it was discovered that the direct crystallization of dolomite can occur from solution at temperatures between 60 and 220 °C
10.
Voestalpine
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Voestalpine AG is an international steel based technology and capital goods group based in Linz, Austria. The company is active in steel, automotive, railway systems, profilform,47 per cent of its workforce is based in Austria. The Linz hot strip mill is an integrated steel works operated by voestalpine Stahl GmbH. In addition to Linz the most important plants are in Leoben in Styria and it had a large plant at Liezen in Styria which closed in the 1990s. The name of the company amalgamates its two components, the VÖEST in Upper Austria, established through nationalization in July 1946. Some of these assets were depleted, abandoned or sold. The core assets that remained concentrated in Styria, the ore pits in Erzberg. The company also owned smaller businesses and railroads in the Mur River valley, Alpine, chaired by Karl Wittgenstein, peaked in 1912, when it owned four coal mines, two iron ore mines and six metallurgical plants. In 1922 56% of Alpine Montangesellshaft, then owned by Fiat, was purchased by Hugo Stinnes for the German giant Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG, in the first half of 1937 the Nazi leadership openly broke with the steel barons and settled for state control over iron and steel production. In the same year Hermann Göring expressed his desire to control Austrian iron reserves at Erzberg, after the Anschluss state-owned Reichswerke Hermann Göring purchased a 13% share in Alpine, and for the next six months wrestled with the VS over control of the company. In March 1939 the VS stepped aside and the Reichswerke acquired 70% share of Alpine in exchange for a 10% share in the new plant in Linz, in June 1939 its name was changed to Alpine Montan AG Hermann Göring. The Reichswerke continued acquisitions and outright confiscations, and soon controlled around half of Austrian heavy industries, in 1944, the peak year for Alpine, its sales reached 371 million RM, 16% of the whole mining and steel sales of the Reichswerke. The Reichswerke announced its plans for a new mill in Linz before the takeover of Alpine. Linz had a place in Nazi system, and the steel project received full financial commitment of the state. Guido Schmidt was appointed chief of the Reichswerke in Linz for his services to the Nazis during the Anschluss, the synergy of steel works in Linz and ore reserves at Erzberg, vertically integrated into the Reichswerke, made it virtually independent of the steel elite of the Ruhr. The works in Linz were viewed as a hub of a future steel conglomerate spanning over the whole Central Europe, the integration was completed with the takeover of Danube shipping companies and local construction businesses. The steel mill was completed during the war and was subsidized by the state. In 1943-1944, when the Ruhr was heavily bombed, Hitler demanded an increase in steel production in Austria
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