Non-technical chats on iron and steel, and their application to modern industrySpring, La Verne W. (La Verne Ward)
History
Non-technical chats on iron and steel, and their application to modern industry
Spring, La Verne W. (La Verne Ward)
Iron; Steel
While the furnace is again being charged through the charging doors at
the rear, the steel is teemed through the nozzle of the big ladle into
the waiting ingot molds. These go to the stripper, to the soaking pits,
and then to the rolls of the blooming mills just as did the Bessemer
ingots.
[Illustration:
AT THE “STRIPPER”
]
In the acid-lined furnace no attempt is made to reduce the phosphorus.
It would be futile. Therefore the materials charged must be very low in
phosphorus and sulphur. No lime additions are made, the flame simply
melts down the pig iron and scrap, the iron oxide later is added from
time to time to keep up the boil until the test bars show that the
carbon as well as the silicon and manganese have been eliminated as
fully as is desired. The metal is then tapped as described above.
Three or more hours are usually required to melt down cold charges. The
elimination of the remainder of the silicon, manganese, and the carbon
requires about four or five hours more. So for each heat the open-hearth
furnace requires from eight to twelve hours, depending largely upon the
speed of charging and melting.
Of late years the difficulties attending the use of molten metal from
the blast furnace in place of cold pig iron have been largely
surmounted. The use of uniform metal from the “mixer,” which was
described in the article on the Bessemer process, has aided the
open-hearth process also. Of course, when molten metal is added none of
its silicon and manganese is reduced by the flame as occurred with the
cold metals during the melting down, so the molten metal charged is
usually low in these elements to compensate. By use of “hot” (molten)
metal the time necessary to produce a “heat” of steel is considerably
shortened.
The first and perhaps the majority of furnaces yet building are
“stationary.” Some have found it advantageous to construct furnaces that
can be tipped to pour the metal into the ladle. Such are known as
“tilting” furnaces. One furnace designer has even gone so far in a
smaller type used for steel castings as to make the furnace removable,
thus doing away with a ladle entirely. The big crane simply lifts the
whole furnace out from between the housings which contain the ports. It
is taken bodily to the molds which are poured directly.
Open-hearth furnaces have been built of larger and larger capacity. A
great many fifty-ton furnaces have been built and furnaces which produce
eighty or more tons at a heat are now not uncommon.
Furnaces of the Talbot type are built for as much as 200 and even 300
tons of metal, but from these only part of the finished steel is tapped
at a time, the remainder being left to help work down the additions of
new material which is added to replace the steel tapped out.
The rolling mill industry is so intimately connected with and dependent
upon the steel-making methods and equipment that each is designed with
reference to the other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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