Steels Appetite For Oxygen

The modern iron and steel industry uses more oxygen than any other. Oxygen can be
considered as much a raw material as the specially prepared iron ore, coke and lime that
the industry consumes. Like them it is a product of complicated and costly processing.
The plants which make oxygenand, increasingly, nitrogen and argonfor the steel
industry distill ordinary air into its components, which they sell to steelmakers and others.
Despite the fast growing demand for oxygen, there is no danger of depletion in the air we
breathe. Industry uses a very small fraction of one percent of the 400 billion tons of oxygen
that nature produces annually.

Liquid oxygen may be shipped Basic

by special rail car or trailer for Oxygen
steel, or other industry, consumption.
Gaseous Furnace
Oxygen
Gaseous oxygen Liquid Oxygen
to be warmed in Storage Tanks
heat exchangers.

Gaseous oxygen
warmed and
returned to pipeline.

Liquid Oxygen
Drain Off

Electric
Furnace

Oxygen
Pipe Lines

Blast Furnace
Bulk gas trailers carry
tube banks of compressed
oxygen gas to steel and
other industries, for a large
variety of uses.
Surface
Scrap Preparation, Conditioning
Burning and Welding (Scarfing)

Fig. 3-3 Oxygen for steelmaking. Adapted from American Iron & Steel Inst.

Steel Scrap capable of using scrap, and nearly 66percent of the steel
The earliest methods of making steel could not make use currently used is recycled. Steel is generally made using a
of scrap. Today basic oxygen furnaces (BOFs), which in- continuous caster that produces slabs, billets, or blooms.
clude early blast furnaces and electric furnaces, are very A BOF may take up to 80 percent liquid metal directly

Steel and Other Metals Chapter 3 41

 In modern mines,
conveyor belts may
move coal from below
to surface tipple.
Then coal is crushed,
blended, and stored.
A go-between for the
continuous miner and
the mines main line,
the shuttle car cuts
switching delays and
keeps coal moving.
Alligator-like machine below is a continuous miner. It
takes place of coal cutter, drill, loading machine and blasting
operation. With it, one worker can mine two tons of coal per
minute. Coal ripped from seam by teeth is conveyed to
hopper, then goes to shuttle car.

Shuttle Car Continuous Miner

Crusher Storage
Primary Bins

Screens
Slimes

A series of Froth
screens sorts Flotation
coal by size. Cell
Fines Very light materials (slimes) are
fed into a bath, and air is bubbled
through mixture. Fine coal particles
Fines are additionally
are attached to the resulting froth
separated on a
of bubbles. They rise to top, are
desliming screen for
skimmed off, and then dewatered
further processing.
Coarse in vacuum filters.

Cyclone
Coal fines are centrifugally
separated from refuse in
cyclones, then screened and
dried. Centrifugal driers, and
sometimes heat driers, are used.
Washing
Jig
Centrifugal
Drier
Slate and other refuse are washed
from coarse coal in equipment typified
by a washing jig. Jig stratifies feed into
layerslight coal on top, refuse on bottom.
Coal passes off end of jig, while riffles
guide refuse to side. Washed coal is dewatered
on screens, then discharged to a
clean-coal belt for delivery to the bins.

Fig. 3-3 Oxygen for steelmaking. (Concluded)

from the blast furnace and then have up to 20 percent
scrap added. An integrated producer using this method
can better control and produce higher grades of steel than
a steelmaker who simply melts scrap. Since steel has no
memory, what once was a juice can may become part of
your car this year and in years to come be part of a bridge.
Blast furnaces do not use scrap except in the form of sinter
(i.e., in powdered form).
Steel mills recycle any of their own product that is not
usable, and they also recycle items such as packing cases.

42 Chapter 3 Steel and Other Metals

 From Coal To Coke
How Fuel is Baked for the Blast Furnace.
Byproduct coke plants bake solid bituminous coal until it is porous. This fuel, called coke, is
just right for use in the blast furnaces which make iron. Coke, unlike coal, burns inside as well
as outside. It does not fuse in a sticky mass. It retains strength under the weight of iron ore
and limestone charged with it into blast furnaces.

Coke
The coke oven is delicate. Lined with silica brick, it must be
Byproduct
warmed gradually at start-up to avoid damage. Averaging 40
Plant
feet in length and up to 20 feet in height each oven is very
narrow, 12 to 22 inches in width. In a battery of such ovens, Gas Collection Most abundant product of the
gas burning in flues in the walls heats the coal to Main coke ovens is blast furnace fuel,
temperatures as high as 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat but there are many byproducts,
drives off gas and tar. Regenerator chambers beneath the from ammonia to xylol.
ovens use some exhaust gases to preheat air. Coal is loaded
into the ovens from the top and the finished coke is pushed
out from one side of the oven out the other.

Pusher
Coal
Ram Quench
Storage Bin
Car
Twelve to 18 hours after the coal has gone
into the oven the doors are removed and
Clean a ram shoves the coke into a quenching
car for cooling.
Coal Bins

Quenching
Tower

Car
Dumper

Larry Car Coke Being

Dumped Coke
Coal in Oven Wharf
Regenerator
Chamber

Fig. 3-4 Producing coke. Adapted from American Iron & Steel Inst.

However, one of the best sources of scrap steel is from old
automobiles. Scrap steel has become such a valuable com-
modity that the American metal market actually tracks
the price of certain grades of scrap daily.
Limestone
Limestone is used as a flux in the blast furnace. It
is a sedimentary rock commonly found all over the
world. There are large deposits in many parts of the
United States, especially in the Appalachian Moun
tains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Mississippi River
Valley.
Limestone consists largely of calcium carbon-
ate in varying degrees of purity. Common chalk is a
form of pure limestone. The color of the limestone
changes with the presence of different types of impuri-
ties. It is white when pure and may also be found as
gray, yellow, or black due to such impurities as iron

Steel and Other Metals Chapter 3 43


Governor House Collecting Main
Coke
Pusher
Fuel
Gas
Main
Fig. 3-5 A schematic diagram of a coal-chemical coke oven. Coal falls from bins into a hopper car, which runs on
top of many narrow ovens, dropping in coal. Heat, in the absence of air, drives gases from the coal to make coke.
The collected gases are valuable byproducts for chemicals.
oxide and organic matter. The properties of the rock
change if certain compounds are present: silica makes
it harder, clay softer, and magnesium carbonate turns it
to dolomite, which is pinkish in color. Limestone may
contain many fossils and loosely cemented fragments
of shells.
Limestone is one of the chief fluxes used in steel-
making to separate the impurities from the iron ore.
Many of the impurities associated with iron ores are
of a highly refractory nature; that is, they are difficult
to melt. If they remained unfused, they would retard
the smelting operation and interfere with the separation
S H OP TAL K
Slag and Stubends
Two environmental concerns in the
industry are the recycling of welding slag and the
stubends of electrodes. Manufacturers of weld-
ing consumables can reuse the slag. Unfortunately,
the cost is too high for the return cost of the residual
material. If there are no forbidden substances, the least
expensive option at this point is to transfer the material
to a dump.
44 Chapter 3 Steel and Other Metals
Coal Bin
Hopper Car
Coke
Guide
Oven Chamber
Fuel Quenching
Regenerator Chamber Gas Car
Main
Waste Gas Flue
of metal and the impurities. The primary function of
limestone is to make these substances more easily
fusible. Figure 3-6 shows the steps taken to process
limestone.
Refractory Materials
Refractory materials may be defined as nonmetallic
materials that can tolerate severe or destructive service
conditions at high temperatures. They must withstand
chemical attack, molten metal and slag erosion, ther-
mal shock, physical impact, catalytic actions, pressure
under load in soaking heat, and other rigorous abuse.
Melting or softening temperatures of most refractory
materials range from 2,600F for light duty fireclay
to 5,000F for brick made from magnesia in its purest
commercial form.
Refractory materials have an almost unlimited num-
ber of applications in the steel industry. Among the most
important are linings for blast furnaces, steelmaking fur-
naces, soaking pits, reheating furnaces, heat-treating fur-
naces, ladles, and submarine cars.
Refractory materials are produced from quartzite, fire-
clay, alumina (aluminum oxide), magnesia (magnesium
oxide), iron oxide, natural and artificial graphites, and
various types of coal, coke, and tar. The raw materials
are crushed, ground, and screened to proper sizes for use
in making bricks and other forms of linings. They are
 The Purifying Stone
Quarrying limestone for preparation and
use in iron and steelmaking furnace is a
large-scale operation. Most states have
limestone deposits, but much of the more
than 30 million tons consumed annually as
fluxing material by the steel industry
comes from Michigan, Pennsylvania and
Ohio. The stone is blasted from its
formation, loaded into trucks and taken to
skip hoists which carry it to a processing
plant near the quarry.
Blasting creates pieces of limestone of random size, many
of which are too big for use as flux in furnaces. The stone
goes to primary crushersenormously strong steel
equipment capable of fragmenting boulders. A jaw-type
crusher is shown here, and its product is then screened and
sorted to matching sizes.
Marine animals and shellfish once lived and died at the bottom of seas
which are now dry land. From their calcareous remains comes limestone
that, in the steel industry, is used primarily to remove impurities from iron
ore in blast furnaces. Limestone is also processed in kilns to make
quicklime, a flux used to help remove impurities from the molten metal in
steelmaking furnaces. The temperatures at which the industrys furnaces
ordinarily operate would not melt the impurities, but limestone and lime
make them fusible, combine with them and carry them off as slag.
Limestone is also used for purposes other than fluxing in the steel
industry. For example, hydrated lime is used for wire drawing, water
treatment, waste pickle liquor treatment, etc. But by far the largest use
of limestone is in the industrys furnaces as described in this chart.

Basic
Oxygen
To derive lime from limestone, carbon
Furnace
dioxide is driven off by high temperatures in
either vertical kilns (left) or horizontal rotary
kilns (below).

Limestone is used in much greater quantities

Jaw Crusher
(Primary)
The coarser stone from the
screening operation may
go to vertical kilns to be
processed into lime. Some
smaller material is further
broken-up in secondary
crushers, many of which
are of the gyratory type.
than lime in the iron and steel industry. It is
chemically effective and physically strong.
However, lime works quicker than the stone
as a flux and is necessary in the
fast-producing basic oxygen process where Electric
it is consumed at the rate of about 150
Furnace
pounds per ton of raw steel produced.
Vertical
Lime Kiln

Rotary
In making lime, horizontal rotary kilns Lime Kiln
process small limestone pieces that
would pass through vertical kilns to
rapidly to be thoroughly calcined.

Primary
Screen
Sinter Plants

Although blast
furnaces, and sinter
plants, in that order,
are the primary users
of limestone, small
amounts are also
used in basic oxygen
and electric furnaces.

Gyratory Crusher Secondary Screen

(Secondary) The material resulting from secondary crushing is again screened to
various sizes. Some of the limestone pieces may be processed through
rotary kilns to make lime. Other small pieces of stone are either used
directly in blast furnace ironmaking or are dried and pulverized for use Blast
largely in the sinter plants which beneficiate iron ore for blast furnaces.
Furnace

Fig. 3-6 Limestone. Adapted from American Iron & Steel Inst.

Steel and Other Metals Chapter 3 45

combined with certain binders, and the prepared batches
are fed to the forming machines. The most common
methods for forming refractory bricks are power pressing,
extrusion, and hand molding. Most refractory bricks are
fired in kilns at high temperature to give them permanent
strength.

Iron Blast Furnace Slag

Slag is the residue produced from the interaction of the
molten limestone and the impurities of the iron. It con-
tains the oxides of calcium, silicon, aluminum, and mag-
nesium, small amounts of iron oxide, and sulfur. Slag may
be processed for use in the manufacture of cement and
concrete blocks, road materials, insulating roofing mate-
rial, and soil conditioner.

Carbon
Carbon is a nonmetallic element that can form a great
variety of compounds with other elements. Compounds
containing carbon are called organic compounds.
In union with oxygen, carbon forms carbon monoxide
and carbon dioxide. When carbon combines with a metal,
it may form compounds such as calcium carbide and iron
carbide.
Three forms of pure carbon exist. The diamond is the
hard crystalline form, and graphite is the soft form. Carbon
black is the amorphous form. Fig. 3-7 This blast furnace will produce over 1,800 tons of pig
In addition to being important as an ingredient of iron daily. The furnace stack and other accessories, fabricated by
steel, carbon is used for industrial diamonds and abra- welding, contain over 2,400 tons of steel plate and structurals.
Nooter Corp.
sives and arc carbons of all kinds. As graphite, it forms
a base for lubricants and is used as a lining for blast
furnaces.

The Smelting of Iron

The Blast Furnace
The first step in the conversion of iron
ore into steel takes place in the blast fur-
nace, Figs. 3-7 and 3-8. In this towering
cylindrical structure, iron is freed from
most of the impurities associated with it
in the ore.
The furnace is charged with iron
ore, limestone, and coke. A blast of
preheated air burns the coke, produc-
ing heat to melt the iron, which falls to
the bottom of the furnace. The molten
limestone combines with most of the
impurities in the ore to form a slag that
separates from the liquid iron because Fig. 3-8 In a blast furnace operation, new charge enters from the top while liquid iron
it is lighter and floats. The liquid iron and slag are drawn away below. Thomas Saupe/Getty Images

46 Chapter 3 Steel and Other Metals

 Blast Furnace Ironmaking
The blast furnace, about 130 feet high, is a huge steel shell lined with heat resistant brick. Once
started, it runs continuously until the lining needs renewal or demand drops. It can run for 10 to 15
years. Ore, coke and limestone work their way down from the top, becoming hotter as they sink. In
the top half of the furnace, gas from coke takes oxygen from ore. Midway, limestone begins to react
with impurities in the ore and coke to form slag. Ash from the coke is absorbed by the slag. Some
silica in the ore is reduced to silicon and dissolves in the iron, as does some carbon in the coke.

Hot Gas 400F

Skip Car Dumping

Flow of Blast
Furnace Gas
Flow of Solid
Raw Material
to Molten Iron Small
Bell
Ironmaking calls for accurate weighing of all ingredi-
ents. When the coke, ore or limestone has been
weighed on the scale car, it goes into a hopper, then
drops into a skip car which hoists it to the top of the
blast furnace. Here a valve-like arrangement permits it
to be added to the furnace with the escape of very little Big
gas. The small bell opens first, closes; then the large 400F Bell
bell opens. The load drops inside.
Skip
Hoist
Blast
Furnace
Raw Hot Blast
Materials of Air
Bins
Bustle Pipe 2000F
Tuyeres (14002100F)
3400F
Scales Slag Tap Iron (2700F)
Notch Hole

Slag Ladle Hot Metal Car

Skip Car
Loading
The molten slag, which floats on a pool of iron four
or five feet deep, is tapped through the slag notch.
Tapped more frequently than the iron, the slag
goes along the slag runner into a ladle. Slag may
be used in making cement, for road ballast, etc.
Injections of natural gas, or
oil, or powdered coal sludge
maybe used to increase
temperatures and speed up
the smelting process.
Sometimes oxygen is added.
When the blast furnace is tapped for its store of iron,
the molten metal is channeled into a hot metal car, a
gigantic drum lined with refractory brick. A hot metal
car holds about 160 tons of liquid iron, insulating it like
a gigantic vacuum bottle. Most molten iron goes to
basic oxygen steelmaking facilities, but some goes to
a casting machine where it is made into solid pigs.

Fig. 3-9 The blast furnace process. Adapted from American Iron & Steel Inst. (Continued)

and the liquid slag are removed periodically from the
bottom of the furnace. This is a continuous process: as
a new charge is introduced at the top, the liquid iron
and slag are removed at the bottom. The progress of the
charge through the furnace from the time it enters the
top until it becomes iron is gradual; five to eight hours
are required. The process is illustrated in Figs. 3-9
and 3-10 (page 49).
The liquid iron is poured into molds to form
what is known as pigs of iron. Pig iron is hard and
brittle. It contains considerable amounts of dissolved
carbon, manganese, silicon, phosphorus, and sul-
fur. Steelmaking is the process of removing impuri-
ties from pig iron and then adding certain elements
in predetermined amounts to arrive at the properties
desired in the finished metal. While several of the
elements added are the same as those removed, the pro-
portions differ.
Nearly all of the pig iron produced in blast fur-
naces remains in the molten state and is loaded directly

Steel and Other Metals Chapter 3 47