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Steel is made from iron and carbon. Cast iron is a hard, brittle material that is difficult to work, whereas steel is malleable, relatively easily formed and versatile. On its own, iron is not strong, but a low concentration of carbon – less than 1 percent, depending on the kind of steel – gives steel strength and other important properties.
The modern steel industry is one of the largest manufacturing industries in the world, but also one of the most energy and greenhouse gas emission intense industries, contributing 8% of global emissions. [2] However, steel is also very reusable: it is one of the world's most-recycled materials, with a recycling rate of over 60% globally. [3]
Iron ore is the raw material used to make pig iron, which is one of the main raw materials to make steel — 98% of the mined iron ore is used to make steel. [2] In 2011 the Financial Times quoted Christopher LaFemina, mining analyst at Barclays Capital, saying that iron ore is "more integral to the global economy than any other commodity ...
Steel production (in million tons) by country in 2023. The steel industry is often considered an indicator of economic progress, because of the critical role played by steel in infrastructural and overall economic development. [97] In 1980, there were more than 500,000 U.S. steelworkers. By 2000, the number of steelworkers had fallen to 224,000 ...
Direct reduction processes can be divided roughly into two categories: gas-based and coal-based. In both cases, the objective of the process is to remove the oxygen contained in various forms of iron ore (sized ore, concentrates, pellets, mill scale, furnace dust, etc.) in order to convert the ore to metallic iron, without melting it (below 1,200 °C (2,190 °F)).
It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron, copper, silver, tin, lead and zinc. Smelting uses heat and a chemical reducing agent to decompose the ore, driving off other elements as gases or slag and leaving the metal behind.
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To examine a piece of steel, obtain a hand file and file an edge of the selected metal. If the piece of steel has not undergone the hardening process, the metal file should easily 'bite' into the sample. If the metal has been hardened, the file fails to cut into the sample and glances off with little visible effect.