How is iron and steel made?

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How is iron and steel made?

Iron is made using a blast furnace see below:

1. The three raw materials needed to make iron are    added into the top of the furnace.

These are:

i) Iron ore – found in rocks. This is a gross raw material as it looses weight on being manufactured.

ii) Coal – Dug from under the ground in from either “Adit” mines or “Deep shaft” mines. This is needed to heat the furnace.

iii) Limestone – Dug from pits similar to the iron ore, this is needed to separate the iron ore from the rocks.

2. Hot air is then added into the furnace

3. The waste material called slag is ejected from the sides of the furnace (this can be used later as a base for roads as it is very hard).

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4. Molten iron pours out of the blast furnace into ingots of iron called pigs as they look like piglets suckling on their mother!

At this stage this “pig iron” is very brittle and would break if dropped

Some of the iron is now moulded into ingots and sold, but the majority is either cast into other things or turned into steel.

Molten iron is fed into a machine called a “converter” (pictured left). Then with a pipe called a lance oxygen is blown through the iron to create steel. Most of this operation is ...

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