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
1. It doesn’t remove all the carbon, just most of it. Over time, you can get more and more out but not all the way to zero. You need fancy lab-grade stuff to get to “zero”.
2. Molten metal is just a liquid…as long as you pump the air in at higher pressure than the liquid, it will move out of the way.
3. You tap the furnace from the bottom so you get pure iron, the slag floats on top. You can remove it after tapping the furnace. Once you cool it, slag becomes a kind of scuzzy glass and you can grind it up for use in other industrial production.
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