Metallics For Steelmaking

Steel is a critical material in our societies and will remain an important one for a long time into the future. In the last two decades, the world steel industry has gone through drastic changes and this is predicted to continue in the future. The Asian countries (e.g. China, India) have been dominant in the production of steel creating global over-capacity, while the steel industry in the developed countries have made tremendous efforts to reinforce its global leadership in process technology and product development, and remain sustainable and competitive. The global steel industry is also facing various grand challenges in strict environmental regulation, new energy and materials sources, and ever-increasing customer requirements for high quality steel products, which has been addressed accordingly by the global iron and steel community. This Special Issue, “Ironmaking and Steelmaking”, released by the journal Metals, published 33 high quality articles from the international iron and steel community, covering the state-of-the-art of the ironmaking and steelmaking processes. This includes fundamental understanding, experimental investigation, pilot plant trials, industrial applications and big data utilization in the improvement and optimization of existing processes, and research and development in transformative technologies. It is hoped that the creation of this special issue as a scientific platform will help drive the iron and steel community to build a sustainable steel industry.

This book provides a fascinating study of the very important emerging field of direct reduction in which iron ore is ‘directly reduced’ in the solid-state, using either natural gas or non-coking coal, to produce a highly metallised material, referred to as sponge iron (or direct reduced iron). This intermediate product is subsequently melted in electric arc furnaces or induction furnaces (sometimes even in basic oxygen furnaces) to produce liquid steel. Such a process combination enables steel to be produced without using coking coal, which is an expensive input in the normal blast furnace—basic oxygen furnace route of steelmaking adopted in integrated steel plants. The book offers comprehensive coverage and critical assessment of various coal-based and gas-based direct reduction processes. Besides dealing with the application of the theoretical principles involved in the thermodynamics and kinetics of direct reduction, the book also contains some worked-out examples on sponge iron production. The concluding part of this seminal book summarises the present and future scenario of direct reduction, including the use of gas generated from coal in direct reduction processes. The book is primarily intended for the undergraduate and postgraduate students of metallurgical engineering. It is also a must-read for researchers, technologists and process metallurgists engaged in the rapidly developing field of direct reduction of iron oxides, which is of critical importance for India and other developing nations that are beginning to play a major role in global steelmaking.

This book presents the fundamentals of iron and steel making, including the physical chemistry, thermodynamics and key concepts, while also discussing associated problems and solutions. It guides the reader through the production process from start to finish, covers the raw materials, and addresses the types of processes and reactions involved in both conventional and alternative methods. Though primarily intended as a textbook for students of metallurgical engineering, the book will also prove a useful reference for professionals and researchers working in this area.

This authoritative account covers the entire spectrum from iron ore to finished steel. It begins by tracing the history of iron and steel production, right from the earlier days to today’s world of oxygen steelmaking, electric steelmaking, secondary steelmaking and continuous casting. The physicochemical fundamental concepts of chemical equilibrium, activity-composition relationships, and structure-properties of molten metals are introduced before going into details of transport phenomena, i.e. kinetics, mixing and mass transfer in ironmaking and steelmaking pro-cesses. Particular emphasis is laid on the understanding of the fundamental principles of the processes and their application to the optimisation of actual processes. Modern developments in blast furnaces, including modelling and process control are discussed along with an introduction to the alternative methods of ironmaking. In the area of steelmaking, BOF plant practice including pre-treatment of hot metal, metallurgical features of oxygen steelmaking processes, and their control form part of the book. It also covers basic open hearth, electric arc furnace and stainless steelmaking, before discussing the area of casting of liquid steel—ingot casting, continuous casting and near net shape casting. The book concludes with a chapter on the status of the ironmaking and steelmaking in India. In line with the application of theoretical principles, several worked-out examples dealing with fundamental principles as applied to actual plant situations are presented. The book is primarily intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students of metallurgical engineering. It would also be immensely useful to researchers in the area of iron and steel.

This collection focuses on energy efficient technologies including innovative ore beneficiation, smelting technologies, recycling and waste heat recovery. The volume also covers various technological aspects of sustainable energy ecosystems, processes that improve energy efficiency, reduce thermal emissions, and reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions. Papers addressing renewable energy resources for metals and materials production, waste heat recovery and other industrial energy efficient technologies, new concepts or devices for energy generation and conversion, energy efficiency improvement in process engineering, sustainability and life cycle assessment of energy systems, as well as the thermodynamics and modeling for sustainable metallurgical processes are included. This volume also offers topics on CO2 sequestration and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from process engineering, sustainable technologies in extractive metallurgy, as well as the materials processing and manufacturing industries with reduced energy consumption and CO2 emission. Contributions from all areas of non-nuclear and non-traditional energy sources, such as solar, wind, and biomass are also included in this volume.Papers from the following symposia are presented in the book:Energy TechnologiesAdvances in Environmental Technologies: Recycling and Sustainability Joint SessionDeriving Value from Challenging Waste Materials: Recycling and Sustainability Joint SessionSolar Cell Silicon