Ok as far as I can tell, the Bessemer process works by pumping air through raw iron that has been rendered molten through a previous process and poured it. Various impurities react with oxygen to form slag, and even more additives like Manganese and more carbon is added.
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1. Does the initial burst of air before the additives remove *all* carbon in the form of carbom monoxide, or is it just *some* carbon and turns all impurities into slag?
2. Air is blown in through pipes on the bottom of the Bessemer process. Why aren’t these pipes getting jammed by the molten metal?
3. How is the slag removed from the Bessemer furnace?
In: Engineering
Maybe you know this, but it’s important to note that the Bessemer processes hasn’t been used on an industrial scale for at least a century. Modern steel mills use a Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) to remove carbon from pig iron and then produce steel. A BOF injects pure oxygen through a pipe from above into the top layer of the iron in order to burn out most of the carbon from the melt. A BOF also uses a different type of ceramic lining which can resist erosion from a basic (as in non-acidic) slag, which improves the BOF’s ability to remove phosphorus, which is a significant impurity in steel.
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