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Contents
1 History
2 Process
3 Variants
4 References
4.1 Bibliography
5 External links
History
The basic oxygen process developed outside of traditional "big steel" environment. It was developed and refined by a single
man, Swiss engineer Robert Durrer, and commercialized by two small steel companies in allied-occupied Austria, which
had not yet recovered from the destruction of World War II.[3]
In 1858, Henry Bessemer patented a steelmaking process involving oxygen blowing for decarburizing molten iron (UK
Patent No. 2207).[3] For nearly a hundred years commercial quantities of oxygen were not available at all or were too
expensive, and the invention remained unused.[3] During World War II German (C. V. Schwartz), Belgian (John Miles) and
Swiss (Durrer and Heinrich Heilbrugge) engineers proposed their versions of oxygen-blown steelmaking, but only Durrer
and Heilbrugge brought it to mass-scale production.[3]
In 1943, Durrer, formerly a professor at the Berlin Institute of Technology, returned to Switzerland and accepted a seat on
the board of Roll AG, the country's largest steel mill.[3] In 1947 he purchased the first small 2.5-ton experimental converter
from the U. S., and on April 3, 1948 the new converter produced its first steel.[3] The new process could conveniently
process large amounts of scrap metal with only a small proportion of primary metal necessary.[4] In the summer of 1948
Roll AG and two Austrian state-owned companies, VOEST and AMG, agreed to commercialize the Durrer process.[4]
By June 1949, VOEST developed an adaptation of Durrer's process, known as the LD (Linz-Donawitz) process.[5][6] In
December 1949, VOEST and AMG committed to building their first 30-ton oxygen converters.[6] They were put into
operation in November 1952 (VOEST in Linz) and May 1953 (AMG, Donawitz)[6] and temporarily became the leading
edge of the world's steelmaking, causing a surge in steel-related research.[7] Thirty-four thousand businesspeople and
engineers visited the VOEST converter by 1963.[7] The LD process reduced processing time and capital costs per ton of
steel, contributing to the competitive advantage of Austrian steel.[5] VOEST eventually acquired the rights to market the
new technology.[6] However, errors made by the VOEST and the AMG management in licensing their technology made
control over its adoption in Japan impossible and by the end of the 1950s the Austrians lost their competitive edge.[5]
The original LD process consisted in blowing oxygen over the top of the molten iron through the water-cooled nozzle of a
vertical lance. In the 1960s steelmakers introduced bottom-blown converters and introduced inert gas blowing for stirring
the molten metal and removing the phosphorus impurities.[2]
In the Soviet Union, some experimental production of steel using the process was done in 1934, but industrial use was
hampered by lack of efficient technology to produce liquid oxygen. In 1939, the Russian physicist Pyotr Kapitsa perfected
the design of the centrifugal turboexpander. The process was put to use in 1942-1944. Most turboexpanders in industrial
use since then have been based on Kapitsa's design and centrifugal turboexpanders have taken over almost 100 percent of
the industrial gas liquefaction and in particular the production of liquid oxygen for steelmaking.[8]
The big American steelmakers caught up late with the new technology; the first oxygen converters in the United States were
launched at the end of 1954 by McLouth Steel in Trenton, Michigan, which accounted for less than 1 per cent of the
national steel market.[2] U.S. Steel and Bethlehem Steel introduced the oxygen process only in 1964.[2] By 1970 half of
world's and 80% of Japan's steel output was produced in oxygen converters.[2] In the last quarter of the 20th century basic
oxygen converters were gradually replaced by the electric arc furnace. In Japan the share of LD process decreased from
80% in 1970 to 70% in 2000; worldwide share of the basic oxygen process stabilized at 60%.[2]
Process
Basic oxygen steelmaking is a primary steelmaking process for converting the molten pig iron into steel by blowing oxygen
through a lance over the molten pig iron inside the converter. The converter used for steel making is called as Basic
Oxygen Furnace because of the exothermic heat generated by the oxidation reactions during blowing.
The basic oxygen steel-making process is as follows:
1. Molten pig iron (sometimes referred to as "hot metal") from a blast furnace is poured into a large refractory-lined
container called a ladle;
2. The metal in the ladle is sent directly for basic oxygen steelmaking or to a pretreatment stage. High purity oxygen at a
pressure of 100-150 psi (pounds per inch square) is introduced at supersonic speed onto the surface of the iron bath
through a water-cooled lance, which is suspended in the vessel and kept at few feet above the bath. Pretreatment of
the blast furnace hot metal is done externally to reduce sulphur, silicon, and phosphorus before charging the hot metal
into the converter. In external desulphurising pretreatment, a lance is lowered into the molten iron in the ladle and
Variants
Earlier converters had false bottom, which can be detached and fixed again and they are still in use. Modern converters
have fixed bottom with plugs for argon purging. Energy Optimization Furnace is a BOF variant associated with a scrap
preheater where the sensible heat in the off-gas is used for preheating scrap, located above the furnace roof. Lance used for
blowing has undergone changes, slagless lances have been employed to avoid jamming of lance during blowing which has a
long tapering copper tip. Post combustion lance tips burn the CO generated during blowing into CO2 which is an
asphyxiant. For slag free tapping, darts, refractory balls and slag detectors are employed. Modern converters are fully
automated with auto blowing patterns and sophisticated control systems.
References
1. ^ Brock and Elzinga, p. 50.
2. ^ a b c d e f g Smil, p. 99.
3. ^ a b c d e f Smil, p. 97.
4. ^ a b Smil, pp. 97-98.
5. ^ a b c Tweraser, p. 313.
6. ^ a b c d Smil, p. 98.
7. ^ a b Brock and Elzinga, p. 39.
8. ^ Ebbe Almqvist (2002). History of Industrial Gases (First Edition ed.). Springer. p. 165. ISBN 0-306-47277-5.
9. ^ McGannon, p 486
Bibliography
McGannon, Harold E. editor (1971). The Making, Shaping and Treating of Steel: Ninth Edition. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania:
United States Steel Corporation.
Smil, Vaclav (2006). Transforming the twentieth century: technical innovations and their consequences, Volume 2
(http://books.google.com/books?id=tl23A0mCPLUC). Oxford University Press US. ISBN 0-19-516875-5.
Brock, James W.; Elzinga, Kenneth G. (1991). Antitrust, the market, and the state: the contributions of Walter Adams
(http://books.google.com/books?id=2Xj1qt1daHAC). M. E. Sharpe. ISBN 0-87332-855-8.
Tweraser, Kurt (2000). The Marshall Plan and the Reconstruction of the Austrian Steel Industry 1945-1953. in: Bischof,
Gunther et al. (2000). The Marshall Plan in Austria (http://books.google.com/books?id=pKlWyYA26GMC). Transaction
Publishers. ISBN 0-7658-0679-7. pp. 290322.
External links
Basic Oxygen Steelmaking module at steeluniversity.org (http://www.steeluniversity.org/content/html/eng/default.asp?
catid=24&pageid=2081272110), including a fully interactive simulation
Basic Oxygen Steelmaking cost model (http://www.steelonthenet.com/steel_cost_bof.html) showing typical cost
structure for liquid steel
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Basic_oxygen_steelmaking&oldid=603979834"
Categories: Industrial processes Metallurgy Steelmaking
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