Ironmakingandsteelmakinghavebeenaroundforalongtime.docVIP

Ironmaking and steelmaking have been around for a long time in various guises, and this has meant that the terminology has grown up over many years. It can be confusing, with two or more words or phrases which refer to the same thing. In addition, since the extraction of iron from ore preceded steelmaking by many years, some terms can be vexing even to many scientists. In this article, an attempt at clarification is made. It is worth starting with the basic words. What does iron mean? For a start, it is an element in the periodic table with the symbol Fe which arises from its’ Latin name ‘ferrum’ and hence the more familiar term ‘ferrous’. However, except for technical people, this can be largely forgotten when considering the iron and steel industry. This is because when iron is extracted from iron ore it is never pure and contains other elements. It is worth mentioning that, unlike gold and copper for example, iron reacts readily with oxygen and so is never found as metal nuggets on the earth with the rare exception of iron meteorites which are in fact an iron-nickel alloy , but occurs as a variety of different ores. Therefore, some extraction process is always needed to obtain iron in its metallic form. Iron will also readily turn back into ‘ore’ by rusting, as readers will be aware, since this is its preferred state in nature. For extraction, high temperatures are required, and so over many years people have developed various furnaces to do this. For many years, people could not achieve high enough temperatures to make iron in liquid form, but instead the furnaces produced a solid mass which was a mixture of iron and slag. Such furnaces are now only of historical interest and today most ironmaking furnaces produce liquid iron – the exception being the production of Direct Reduced Iron DRI in which natural gas, reformed to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide, is used to react with the ore below its melting point to form pellets of spongy iron. In some places