1. STEEL The Iron and Steel industry is one of the most essential basic industries. Automobiles, appliances, bridges, oil pipelines, and buildings, are all made with steel.

2. The Manufacturing Process Making cast iron and steel http://www

3. 1 Iron ore is dug out of surface mines
1 Iron ore is dug out of surface mines. The ore is obtained in pieces of various sizes, ranging from particles as small as 0.04 in (1 mm) in diameter to lumps as large as 40 in (1 m) in diameter. Large lumps are reduced in size by being crushed. The smaller pieces then pass through sieves to sort them by size. Small particles are melted together into larger pieces, a process known as sintering. To make cast iron and steel, the pieces of ore should be from in (7-25 mm) in diameter.

4. STRIP / SURFACE MINE

5. 2 A conveyor belt moves a mixture of iron ore and coke to the top of a blast furnace. A blast furnace is a tall vertical steel shaft lined with heat-resistant brick and graphite. The mixture of iron ore and coke, known as charge, falls through the blast furnace. Meanwhile, air heated to a temperature of 1,650-2,460° F (900-1,350° C) is blown into the blast furnace. The hot air burns the coke, releasing carbon monoxide and heat. The carbon monoxide reacts with the iron oxides present in the ore to form iron and carbon dioxide. The result of this process is molten pig iron, which consists of at least 90% iron, 3-5% carbon, and various impurities.

6. BLAST FURNACE

7. 3 To make cast iron, the molten pig iron is allowed to cool into a solid. It is then mixed with scrap metal. The scrap metal is selected to result in a final product with the desired characteristics. The mixture of pig iron and scrap metal is moved by a conveyor belt to the top of a cupola. A cupola is similar to a blast furnace, but is somewhat smaller. The pig iron and scrap metal fall on a bed of hot coke through which air is blown. This process removes the impurities and some of the carbon, resulting in molten cast iron, which is poured into molds to form ingots as it cools.

8. INGOT MOLD

9. Ingot Cars - Model

10. 4 To make steel, the pig iron must have most of its carbon removed
4 To make steel, the pig iron must have most of its carbon removed. The most common method used to make steel is known as the basic oxygen process. This procedure uses a steel container lined with heat-resistant brick. Scrap metal of the proper type to produce steel with the desired characteristics is loaded into the container. Molten pig iron, usually transported directly from the blast furnace without cooling, is added to the scrap metal. Pure oxygen is blown into the mixture at extremely high speeds. The oxygen reacts with various impurities in the mixture to form a mixture of solids, known as slag, floating on the molten metal. The oxygen also removes most of the carbon in the form of carbon monoxide gas. Lime (calcium oxide) is also added to the mixture. The lime acts as a flux; that is, it causes the substances in the mixture to melt together at a lower temperature than they would without it. The lime also removes sulfur in the form of calcium sulfide, which forms part of the slag. The slag is removed from the molten steel, which is poured into molds to form ingots, cooled between rollers to form sheets, or otherwise solidified.

11. SLAG POT Dumping slag at Bethlehem Steel in 1994
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12. Walthers Slag Car - Model

13. Slag Car in Action

14. Shaping cast iron and steel
5 Cast iron, as its name suggests, is usually shaped by casting. Casting involves pouring molten metal into a mold. The most common method used for cast iron is sandcasting.
A pattern in the shape of the desired product is shaped from wood, clay, metal, or plastic. The pattern is firmly packed into sand which is held together with various substances known as bonding agents. The sand mixture is hardened by various methods, which may involve heat, pressure, or chemicals. The pattern is removed from the hardened sand. Molten cast iron is poured into the resulting mold and allowed to cool into a solid.

16. Blast furnaces are usually tall shaft-type steel vessels, up to ten stories high, internally lined with refractory brick, and superimposed over a crucible-like hearth. The necessary charge to produce molten pig iron consists of iron-bearing materials, coke, and flux. The charge is introduced into the furnace at the top. Blasts of heated air from large blast stoves, and in most cases gaseous, liquid, or powdered fuel, are injected into the furnace through openings (tuyeres) at the bottom of the shaft just above the hearth crucible. As the hot air encounters the coke, the coke is burned along with the injected fuels, producing the necessary heat and reducing gas to remove oxygen from the ore in the reduction process. As the iron melts, it descends and accumulates in the crucible. The molten pig iron and slag are drained from the crucible through different tapping holes. The gas that exits from the top of the furnace goes through a cleaning process. The cleaned hot gas is then used in other operations of the plant, e.g. to pre-heat the blast air, while the collected dust is sent to the sintering plant for recycling back into the blast furnace. Once fired-up, a blast furnace burns continuously until the lining needs replacement (approximately 5-6 years).

17. Iron-bearing materials - The iron-bearing materials are usually iron ore, sinter, pellets, mill scale, steelmaking slag, scrap, and other materials. Coke - The coke is added to provide the main chemical reagents (carbon and carbon monoxide) for the iron ore reduction. Flux - The flux, limestone and/or dolomite, is added to combine with ash in the coke and gangue in the ores, to produce a slag that rises to the top of the pool of molten pig iron that collects in the crucible.

18. Blast Furnace

19. STEEL MILL

20. MINI MILL LOCATION BY STATE

21. Minimills are steel companies that produce steel by melting recycled ferrous scrap in electric arc furnaces (EAFs) to make a limited quantity of commodity steel products such as carbon steel bars, wire rods, and light to medium structurals that are sold primarily to the construction industry. Some larger minimills have entered the flat rolled products market.
Minimills are typically located close to their customers and sources of scrap. As shown in the figure, there are over 100 operating minimills in the U.S. Minimills now account for about 38% of total U.S. steel industry shipments. Some of the larger minimills have expanded their production capabilities to make large structurals, and have subsequently driven some integrated producers out of this market.

22. Adding ingredients to the batch

23. Cleaning the runner and tap hole that allow liquid steel to flow from an electric furnace into a waiting ladle.

24. A steel worker is catching a sample of molten steel in a crucible during the manufacturing process.

25. Molten iron, straight from a blast furnace, charges a basic oxygen furnace. The furnace oxidizes carbon residues, which escape as carbon monoxide gas. It also removes other impurities as slag, and then adds steel alloys.

27. PITTSBURGH STEEL INDUSTRY
HOMESTEAD

28. HOMESTEAD STEEL EARLY 20TH CENTURY

29. The towns of Donora and Webster, Pennsylvania, along the Monongahela River southwest of Pittsburgh, were the site of a lethal air pollution disaster in late October 1948 that convinced members of the scientific and medical communities, as well as the public, that air pollution could kill people, as well as cause serious damage to health. The disaster took place over the course of five days, when weather conditions known as a temperature inversion trapped cooled coal smoke and pollution from a zinc smelter and steel mill beneath a layer of warm air over the river valley that enclosed the two towns and the surrounding farmland. Almost half of the area's 14,000 residents reported becoming ill and about two dozen deaths were attributed to the badly polluted air.

30. Noontime smog on a street in Donora, Pennsylvania, 1948
Noontime smog on a street in Donora, Pennsylvania, ( © Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, all rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.)

31. Iron and steel were Pittsburgh's main industries for nearly a century and a half. The mills churned out their products 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It can be said that steel from Pittsburgh's mills practically built America. From the Empire State Building to the Golden Gate Bridge, steel made in our city found its way into all corners of the developing nation.

32. The Carnegie Steel Homestead Works were the largest steel plant in the United States. The mills were sold by Andrew Carnegie to United States Steel. The mills operated until the 1970s, when the steel industry suffered irreversible setbacks. The land once occupied by the Homestead Works is now home to the Waterfront, a residential and commercial development.

33. “The Smoky City” was a major industrial center of the United States in the 20th century. During World War II, Pittsburgh produced more steel than all of Germany. The steel industry centered on the Three Rivers put Pittsburgh on the map, but the Bessemer process that made steel production economical also required a great deal of coal. The smoke turned the skies black; the fires and molten metals from the steel mills made a hellish glow. Pittsburgh was the emodiment of the Industrial Revolution, and as such, cut of the same mold that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s infernal vision of Mordor. The photo to the right was taken at noon.
by Jason Godesky

34. Today, Pittsburgh isn’t much cleaner, but it is much prettier
Today, Pittsburgh isn’t much cleaner, but it is much prettier. Today, it is air pollution from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois that follows the Ohio river valley to settle in Western Pennsylvania.1 The plight of industrial centers like Pittsburgh spurred initiatives to do something about the environment, resulting in “clean-burning” coal, used now almost as if it forms a single, unbreakable phrase. What they succeeded in doing was shifting from pollution we could see, to pollution we can’t see. Pittsburgh doesn’t look any dirtier than any other city today—but it’s still one of the EPA’s supersites.

35. March 3, 2011 U.S. mills are currently operating at 75 percent of capacity. While they are benefitting from stronger order books and prices that have escalated nearly 50 percent since October, their prospects are tempered by sharply higher raw material prices.

37. http://www. energysolutionscenter