Book Description

This authoritative account covers the entire spectrum from iron ore to finished steel. It begins by tracing the history of iron and steel production, right from the earlier days to today’s world of oxygen steelmaking, electric steelmaking, secondary steelmaking and continuous casting. The physicochemical fundamental concepts of chemical equilibrium, activity-composition relationships, and structure-properties of molten metals are introduced before going into details of transport phenomena, i.e. kinetics, mixing and mass transfer in ironmaking and steelmaking pro-cesses. Particular emphasis is laid on the understanding of the fundamental principles of the processes and their application to the optimisation of actual processes. Modern developments in blast furnaces, including modelling and process control are discussed along with an introduction to the alternative methods of ironmaking. In the area of steelmaking, BOF plant practice including pre-treatment of hot metal, metallurgical features of oxygen steelmaking processes, and their control form part of the book. It also covers basic open hearth, electric arc furnace and stainless steelmaking, before discussing the area of casting of liquid steel—ingot casting, continuous casting and near net shape casting. The book concludes with a chapter on the status of the ironmaking and steelmaking in India. In line with the application of theoretical principles, several worked-out examples dealing with fundamental principles as applied to actual plant situations are presented. The book is primarily intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students of metallurgical engineering. It would also be immensely useful to researchers in the area of iron and steel.