Basic oxygen steelmaking

Basic oxygen steelmaking converts molten iron into steel by blowing high-purity oxygen through it, oxidizing carbon and other impurities. Fluxes bind the resulting oxides into slag.

Basic oxygen furnace: A refractory-lined vessel that refines molten iron by blowing oxygen onto or into the charge. This is the vessel where oxygen refining and slag formation occur.
Bessemer process: A nineteenth-century steelmaking process that blows air through molten pig iron to oxidize impurities. It established converter steelmaking, but air introduced nitrogen that oxygen steelmaking avoids.
Integrated steel mill: A steelworks that combines ironmaking and steelmaking, typically using blast furnaces and basic oxygen furnaces. This is the industrial setting in which the process is most commonly used.
Mass production: The manufacture of large quantities of standardized goods using organized industrial methods. Fast, high-volume oxygen refining helped make steel production more productive.
Oxygen lance: A water-cooled pipe that directs a high-speed oxygen jet into a steelmaking vessel. Its jet drives oxidation while stirring the molten bath.
Robert Durrer: A Swiss metallurgist who developed the oxygen steelmaking process in the 1940s. His experiments established the technical basis for blowing oxygen onto molten iron.
Hot metal: Liquid iron tapped from a blast furnace, containing substantial carbon and other impurities. It is the principal iron-bearing feed for a basic oxygen furnace.
Steel industry: The industrial network that produces and processes steel for construction, manufacturing, and infrastructure. The process reshaped production across the modern steel industry.
Decarburization: The removal of carbon from a metal, commonly by oxidizing it into carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide. Carbon oxidation is the central refining reaction in the process.
Linz-Donawitz process: The original commercial top-blown oxygen steelmaking process developed in Austria. Its name records the Austrian sites where the process was industrially developed.

Linked from 13 pages