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Steelmaking is the process of producing steel from iron ore and/or scrap. Steel has been made for millennia, and was commercialized on a massive scale in the 1850s and 1860s, using the Bessemer and Siemens-Martin processes. Two major commercial processes are used.
Most of the steel produced has been by the growing number of mini-mills, also called specialty mills, which in 2014 numbered 113. In 1981, mini-mills produced an estimated 15% of US steel. [13] Since 2002, steel produced by electric arc furnace, the process used by the mini-mills, has produced more than half the steel made in the US.
The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron.
In 1862, Samuel Fox began to produce crucible steel. The company installed two 5-ton Bessemer converters, the process being the invention of Sir Henry Bessemer. In 1863 a rail and billet mill was established, followed by a rod mill in 1864. [8] A railway line was built to link the steel works with the wider region. [9]
Steel is an alloy composed of between 0.2 and 2.0 percent carbon, with the balance being iron. From prehistory through the creation of the blast furnace, iron was produced from iron ore as wrought iron, 99.82–100 percent Fe, and the process of making steel involved adding carbon to iron, usually in a serendipitous manner, in the forge, or via the cementation process.
Sir Henry Bessemer FRS (19 January 1813 – 15 March 1898) was an English inventor, whose steel-making process would become the most important technique for making steel in the nineteenth century for almost one hundred years.
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Most iron and steel in the United States is now made from iron and steel scrap, rather than iron ore. The United States is also a major importer of iron and steel, as well as iron and steel products. Employment as of 2014 was 149,000 people employed in iron and steel mills, and 69,000 in foundries.