OT: Clean steel?

From: Stan Pietkiewicz <pietstan_at_rogers.com>
Date: Fri Oct 18 17:19:01 2002

Sellam Ismail wrote:

<<snip>>
> and therefore contains no radiation. Apparently, air since the first
> atomic bomb test is now filled with background radiation, and because so
> much air is used in the smelting process, a lot of the radiation gets into
> modern steel making it unsuitable for some applications (such as medical
> test equipment where radioactive isotopes are used as part of the
> operation).


Unless the steel is refined using either the open hearth or the Bessemer process,

there is no "air" used at all. Both of these processes were notorious for air

pollution problems. More commonly, in the last 40 years or so, steel refining is done

using the basic oxygen steel process. Pure oxygen is blown into a
brick-lined vessel charged with liquid iron and scrap steel and the
impurities burn off at. Alloying elements are added as needed, and the
steel is poured off into ladles, and further processed. Electric arc
furnaces are also used for specialty steels (stainless comes to
mind....) and probably other applications as well.
The bottom line is, there are more efficient ways to make steel than to
use air to burn off the impurities...

Stan
Received on Fri Oct 18 2002 - 17:19:01 BST