IRON AND STEEL WORK

Have you ever wondered how people refine iron and steel? You've probably heard of iron ore, but how
do we turn a slab of rock into a set of stainless steel surgical instruments or a locomotive?
What is iron like?.
You might think of iron as a hard, strong metal tough enough to support bridges and buildings, but
that's not pure iron. What you're thinking of is alloys of iron combined with carbon and other elements.
Pure iron is a different matter altogether. Consider its physical properties (how it behaves by itself) and
its chemical properties (how it combines and reacts with other elements and compounds).

Pig iron
Basic raw iron is called pig iron because it's produced in the form of chunky molded blocks known as
pigs. Pig iron is made by heating an iron ore (rich in iron oxide) in a blast furnace: an enormous
industrial fireplace, shaped like a cylinder, into which huge drafts of hot air are introduced in regular
"blasts". Blast furnaces are often spectacularly huge: some are 3060m (100200ft) high, hold
dozens of trucks worth of raw materials, and often operate continuously for years at a time without
being switched off or cooled down. Inside the furnace, the iron ore reacts chemically with coke (a
carbon-rich form of coal) and limestone. The coke "steals" the oxygen from the iron oxide (in a
chemical process called reduction), leaving behind a relatively pure liquid iron, while the limestone
helps to remove the other parts of the rocky ore (including clay, sand, and small stones), which form a
waste slurry known as slag. The iron made in a blast furnace is an alloy containing about 9095
percent iron, 34 percent carbon, and traces of other elements such as silicon, manganese, and
phosphorus, depending on the ore used. Pig iron is much harder than 100 percent pure iron, but still
too weak for most everyday purposes.
Cast iron
Cast iron is simply liquid iron that has been cast: poured into a mold and allowed to cool and harden
to form a finished structural shape, such as a pipe, a gear, or a big girder for an iron bridge. Pig iron is
actually a very basic form of cast iron, but it's molded only very crudely because it's typically melted
down to make steel. The high carbon content of cast iron (the same as pig ironroughly 34 percent)
makes it extremely hard and brittle: large crystals of carbon embedded in cast iron stop the crystals of
iron from moving about. Cast iron has two big drawbacks: first, because it's hard and brittle, it's
virtually impossible to shape, even when heated; second, it rusts relatively easily. It's worth noting that
there are actually several different types of cast iron, including white and gray cast irons (named for
the coloring of the finished product caused by the way the carbon inside it behaves).
Wrought iron
Cast iron assumes its finished shape the moment the liquid iron alloy cools down in the mold. Wrought
iron is a very different material made by mixing liquid iron with some slag. The result is an iron alloy
with a much lower carbon content. Wrought iron is softer than cast iron and much less tough, so you
can heat it up to shape it relatively easily, and it's also much less prone to rusting. However, relatively
little wrought iron is now produced commercially, since most of the objects originally produced from it
are now made from steel, which is both cheaper and generally of more consistent quality. Wrought
iron is what people used to use before they really mastered making steel in large quantities in the mid19th century.
IRON MAKING
The more advanced way to smelt iron is in a blast furnace. A blast furnace is charged with iron ore,
charcoal or coke (coke is charcoal made from coal) and limestone (CaCO 3). Huge quantities of air
blast in at the bottom of the furnace, and the calcium in the limestone combines with the silicates to
form slag. Liquid iron collects at the bottom of the blast furnace, underneath a layer of slag. The
blacksmith periodically lets the liquid iron flow out and cool.At this point, the liquid iron typically flows
through a channel and into a bed of sand. Once it cools, this metal is known as pig iron. To create a
ton of pig iron, you start with 2 tons (1.8 metric tons) of ore, 1 ton of coke (0.9 metric tons) and a half
ton (0.45 metric tons) of limestone. The fireconsumes 5 tons (4.5 metric tons) of air. The temperature
at the core of the blast furnace reaches nearly 3,000 degrees F (about 1,600 degrees C).
Pig iron contains 4 to 5 percent carbon and is so hard and brittle that it's almost useless. If you want
to do anything with it, you have three options. First, you can melt it, mix it with slag and hammer it out
to eliminate most of the carbon (down to 0.3 percent) and create strong, malleable wrought iron. The

second option is to melt the pig iron and combine it with scrap iron, smelt out impurities and add alloys
to form cast iron. This metal contains 2 to 4 percent carbon, along with quantities of silicon,
manganese and trace impurities. Cast iron, as the name implies, is typically cast into molds to form a
wide variety of parts and products.
TYPES OS STEELS
Carbon steels
The vast majority of steel produced each day (around 8090 percent) is what we call carbon steel,
though it contains only a tiny amount of carbonsometimes much less than 1 percent. In other words,
carbon steel is just basic, ordinary steel. Steels with about 12 percent carbon are called (not
surprisingly) high-carbon steels and, like cast-iron, they tend to be hard and brittle; steels with less
than 1 percent carbon are known as low-carbon steels and like wrought iron, are softer and easier to
shape. A huge range of different everyday items are made carbon steels, from car bodies and warship
hulls to steel cans and engine parts.
Alloy steels
As well as iron and carbon, alloy steels contain one or more other elements, such
as chromium, copper, manganese, nickel, silicon, or vanadium. In alloy steels, it's these extra
elements that make the difference and provide some important additional feature or improved property
compared to ordinary carbon steels. Alloy steels are generally stronger, harder, tougher, and more
durable than carbon steels.
Tool steels
Tool steels are especially hard alloy steels used to make tools, dies, and machine parts. They're made
from iron and carbon with added elements such as nickel, molybdenum, or tungsten to give extra
hardness and resistance to wear. Tool steels are also toughened up by a process called tempering, in
which steel is first heated to a high temperature, then cooled very quickly, then heated again to a
lower temperature.
Stainless steels
Stainless steel does not readily corrode, rust or stain with water as ordinary steel does. However, it is
not fully stain-proof in low-oxygen, high-salinity, or poor air-circulation environments. There are
different grades and surface finishes of stainless steel to suit the environment the alloy must endure.
Stainless steel is used where both the properties of steel and corrosion resistance are required.The
steel you probably see most often is stainless steelused in household cutlery, scissors, and medical
instruments. Stainless steels contain a high proportion ofchromium and nickel, are very resistant to
corrosion and other chemical reactions, and are easy to clean, polish, and sterilize.