Pig iron, also known as crude iron, is an intermediate good used by the iron industry in the production of steel. It is developed by smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a high carbon content, typically 3.8–4.7%, along with silica and other dross, which makes it brittle and not useful directly as a material except for limited applications.
Coke is a grey, hard, and porous coal-based fuel with a high carbon content and few impurities, made by heating coal or oil in the absence of air—a destructive distillation process. It is an important industrial product, used mainly in iron ore smelting, but also as a fuel in stoves and forges when air pollution is a concern.
Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content in contrast to that of cast iron. It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions, which give it a wood-like "grain" that is visible when it is etched, rusted, or bent to failure. Wrought iron is tough, malleable, ductile, corrosion resistant, and easily forge welded, but is more difficult to weld electrically.
Steelmaking is the process of producing steel from iron ore and/or scrap. In steelmaking, impurities such as nitrogen, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur and excess carbon are removed from the sourced iron, and alloying elements such as manganese, nickel, chromium, carbon and vanadium are added to produce different grades of steel.
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. Blast refers to the combustion air being supplied above atmospheric pressure.
POSCO is a South Korean steel manufacturer headquartered in Pohang, South Korea. It had an output of 42,000,000 metric tons of crude steel in 2015, making it the world's sixth-largest steelmaker by this measure. In 2010, it was the world's largest steel manufacturing company by market value. Also, in 2012, it was named as the world's 146th-largest corporation by the Fortune Global 500.
A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel. It may be an integrated steel works carrying out all steps of steelmaking from smelting iron ore to rolled product, but may also be a plant where steel semi-finished casting products are made from molten pig iron or from scrap.
An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ironworks is ironworks.
Direct reduced iron (DRI), also called sponge iron, is produced from the direct reduction of iron ore into iron by a reducing gas which either contains elemental carbon or hydrogen. When hydrogen is used as the reducing gas there are no greenhouse gases produced. Many ores are suitable for direct reduction.
Hot blast refers to the preheating of air blown into a blast furnace or other metallurgical process. As this considerably reduced the fuel consumed, hot blast was one of the most important technologies developed during the Industrial Revolution. Hot blast also allowed higher furnace temperatures, which increased the capacity of furnaces.
Ferrous metallurgy is the metallurgy of iron and its alloys. The earliest surviving prehistoric iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were made from meteoritic iron-nickel. It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ores began, but by the end of the 2nd millennium BC iron was being produced from iron ores in the region from Greece to India, and sub-Saharan Africa. The use of wrought iron was known by the 1st millennium BC, and its spread defined the Iron Age. During the medieval period, smiths in Europe found a way of producing wrought iron from cast iron, in this context known as pig iron, using finery forges. All these processes required charcoal as fuel.
The tatara (鑪) is a traditional Japanese furnace used for smelting iron and steel. The word later also came to mean the entire building housing the furnace. The traditional steel in Japan comes from ironsand processed in a special way, called the tatara system.
Charcoal iron is the substance created by the smelting of iron ore with charcoal.
POSCO India Private Limited is an Indian subsidiary of Korean conglomerate POSCO.
The HIsarna ironmaking process is a direct reduced iron process for iron making in which iron ore is processed almost directly into liquid iron (pig iron). The process combines two process units, the Cyclone Converter Furnace (CCF) for ore melting and pre-reduction and a Smelting Reduction Vessel (SRV) where the final reduction stage to liquid iron takes place. The process does not require the manufacturing of iron ore agglomerates such as pellets and sinter, nor the production of coke, which are necessary for the blast furnace process. Without these steps, the HIsarna process is more energy-efficient and has a lower carbon footprint than traditional ironmaking processes. In 2018 Tata Steel announced it has demonstrated that more than 50% CO2 emission reduction is possible with HIsarna technology, without the need for carbon capture technology.
The Corex Process is a smelting reduction process created by Primetals as a more environmentally friendly alternative to the blast furnace. Presently, the majority of steel production is through the blast furnace which has to rely on coking coal. That is coal which has been cooked in order to remove impurities so that it is superior to coal. The blast furnace requires a sinter plant in order to prepare the iron ore for reduction. Unlike the blast furnace, smelting reduction processes are typical smaller and use coal and oxygen directly to reduce iron ore into a usable product. Smelting reduction processes come in two basic varieties, two-stage or single-stage. In a single-stage system the iron ore is both reduced and melted in the same container. In a two-stage process, like Corex, the ore is reduced in one shaft and melted and purified in another. Plants using the Corex process have been put use in areas such as South Africa, India, and China. First COREX process was installed in 1988 at South Africa.
Primetals Technologies Limited, is an engineering and plant construction company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with numerous locations worldwide. It serves clients in the metals industry, both the ferrous and the nonferrous metals sector. It was established as a joint venture between Siemens VAI Metals Technologies and Mitsubishi-Hitachi Metals Machinery in 2015. As of 2020, Primetals Technologies is a joint venture of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and partners.
In 2022, the United States was the world’s third-largest producer of raw steel, and the sixth-largest producer of pig iron. The industry produced 29 million metric tons of pig iron and 88 million tons of steel. Most iron and steel in the United States is now made from iron and steel scrap, rather than iron ore. The United States is also a major importer of iron and steel, as well as iron and steel products.
In the iron and steel industry, direct reduction is a set of processes for obtaining iron from iron ore, by reducing iron oxides without melting the metal. The resulting product is pre-reduced iron ore.
The Krupp–Renn process was a direct reduction steelmaking process used from the 1930s to the 1970s. It used a rotary furnace and was one of the few technically and commercially successful direct reduction processes in the world, acting as an alternative to blast furnaces due to their coke consumption. The Krupp-Renn process consumed mainly hard coal and had the unique characteristic of partially melting the charge. This method is beneficial for processing low-quality or non-melting ores, as their waste material forms a protective layer that can be easily separated from the iron. It generates Luppen, nodules of pre-reduced iron ore, which can be easily melted down.
