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BASICS OF IRON & STEEL

Iron and Steel industry has been one of the oldest and has been an instrumental industry collaborating in the growth of mankind, civilizations and modern world. As it is rightly envisaged in their statement India's major public sector steel giant STEEL AUTHORITY OF INDIA LIMITED's catch line"There is a little bit of Steel in everybody's life"

If you had to name the technologies that had the greatest effect on modern society, the refining of the heavy metal element iron would have to be near the top. Iron makes up a huge array of modern products. especially carbon-rich, commercial iron, which we call steel. Cars, tractors, bridges, trains (and their rails), tools, skyscrapers, guns and ships all depend on iron and steel to make them strong. Iron is so important that primitive societies are measured by the point at which they learn how to refine it. This is where the "Iron Age" classification comes from.

­Have you ever wondered how people refine iron and steel? You've probably heard ­of iron ore, but how do we turn a slab of rock into a set of stainless steel surgical instruments or a locomotive? In this article, you'll learn all about iron and steel. I thought why not gift the community with an easy to refer book on Steel making with information and insights on the happenings, developments and achievements in this wonderful industry.,

So, let's get going..

But, HOLD ON .. Before we dive into the world of steel making, let us first go through why do we need to know all this, don't you agree?

The Advantages of Iron ­ ­Iron is an incredibly useful substance.It's less brittle than stone yet, compared to wood or copper, extremely strong. If properly heated, iron is also relatively easy to shape into various forms, as well as refine, using simple tools. And speaking of those tools, unlike wood, iron can handle high temperatures, allowing us to build everything from fire tongs to furnaces out of it.In contrast to most substances, you can also magnetize iron, making it useful in the creation of electric motors and generators. Finally, there certainly aren't any iron shortages to worry about. The Earth's crust is 5 percent iron, and in some areas, the element concentrates in ores that contain as much as 70 percent iron.

When you compare iron and steel with something like aluminum, you can see why it was so important historically. To refine aluminum, you need access to huge quantities of electricity. Furthermore, to shape aluminum, you have to either cast it or extrude it. Iron, however, is much easier to manipulate. The element has been useful to people for thousands of years, while aluminum really didn't exist in any meaningful way until the 20th century.

­Fortunately, iron can be created relatively easily with tools that were available to primitive societies. There will likely come a day when humans become so technologically advanced that iron is completely replaced by aluminum, plastics and things like carbon and glass fibers. But right now, the economic equation gives inexpensive iron and steel a huge advantage over these much more expensive alternatives.

The only real problem with iron and steel is rust. Fortunately, you can control rust by painting, galvanizing, chrome plating or coating the iron with a sacrificial anode, which corrodes faster than the stronger metal. Think of this last option as hiring a bodyguard to take a bullet for the president. The more active metal has to almost completely corrode before the less active iron or steel begins the process.

­Humans have come up with countless uses for iron, from carpentry tools and culinary equipment to complicated machinery and instruments of torture. Before iron can be put to any of these uses, however, it has to be mined from the ground.

Iron

This element is fairly-good reducing agent- so good that it rarely appears uncombined in nature. Iron is by far the most common of these. One of the most common elements in the universe, it is the heaviest metal that forms in normal fusion in stars (but only the largest stars). Once a star begins to produce iron in its core, that star is doomed in short order to a violent explosion that destroys the star and scatters its matter, including all of the elements that it has formed in fusion.

Uncombined iron is found in meteors, solid objects that strike the earth. Iron is by far the most common of the transition elements, and one of the most useful. It's hard to count all the uses of iron, the metal most used (whether pure or in alloys) in almost all machines. Giant "glass box" skyscrapers depend upon iron bars within their concrete "skeletons" to give them strength and stability. The rails of railroads are long iron bars. Concrete highways and airstrips have iron re-enforcing bars to give them the strength to hold heavy vehicles. The vehicles themselves are largely iron and a harder material known as steel, an alloy of iron, carbon, and often metals other than iron.

Iron is the cheapest of all structural metals. With some skill of an artisan known as a blacksmith it can be worked into many useful objects such as horseshoes, nails, plows, chains, pails, ladders, and many tools. In foundries, iron and steel are shaped in far greater quantities into such objects as furniture and parts of aircraft, ships, motor vehicles, and appliances.

Iron has one fault as a structural material: it rusts easily. In the presence of water (especially salt water) it corrodes into oxides:

Fe(s) + 1/2 O2(g) → FeO(s) 2 Fe(s) + 3/2 O2(g) → Fe2O3(s)

and a mixed oxide known as hematite

2 Fe(s) + 3/2 O2(g) → Fe2O3(s)

one of the most common ores of iron. Iron oxides are mildly alkaline, so iron resists attacks by alkalis; acids attack it. For example,

Fe (s) + H2SO4(l) → Fe2+(aq) + SO42-(aq) + H2(g)

Even a comparatively weak acid, like phosphoric acid, can attack iron oxide. This is the "naval jelly" reaction that removes rust from iron:  FeO(s) + H3PO4(l) → Fe2+(aq) + HPO4(aq)-2 + H2O(l)

A great advance of humanity, the beginning of the Iron Age, began when people found that they could separate iron from oxygen by burning it with carbon (usually charcoal) which can reduce iron oxides to iron:  Fe3O4(s) + 4 C(s) → 3 Fe(s) + 4 CO(g)

Much of existing economic activity depends upon the extraction of iron ore, the reduction of iron ore to iron, the strengthening of iron to steel, the creation of iron and steel objects, and the various practices used in protecting iron from corrosion.

Important as that activity is, our lives would be impossible without an important compound of iron known as hemoglobin which carries oxygen through the bloodstream to cells where the cells can use the oxygen to release energy from food also delivered to cells through the bloodstream. The earth itself has a hot, dense core of largely iron and nickel. At the temperatures characteristic of the Earth's core the iron and nickel form a giant natural magnet that creates a magnetic field that goes beyond the Earth itself into the atmosphere. That magnetic field drives off much dangerous radiation that would kill life on the Earth's surface if it reached the earth's surface.