Brazil Steel Institute

Production stages

Steel is produced, basically, from iron ore, coal and lime. The production of steel may be divided in four stages: load preparation, reduction, refining and lamination.

1. Load Preparation

• A large part of the iron ore (fines) is agglomerated using lime and coke fines.
• The resulting product is called sinter.
• Coal is processed in the coke oven and becomes coke.

2. Reduction

• These raw materials, now prepared, are loaded into the blast furnace.
• Oxygen heated up to 1000º C is blown from the bottom of the blast furnace.
• Coal, now in contact with the oxygen, produces heat that melts the metallic load and starts the process of reduction of the iron ore into liquid metal: pig iron.
• Pig iron is a carbon steel alloy with a very high rate of carbon.

3. Refining

• Oxygen or electric steelshops are used to turn liquid or solid pig iron and steel and iron scrap into liquid steel.
• During this stage, part of the carbon contained in the pig iron is withdrawn along with impurities.
• Most of the liquid steel is solidified in continuous teeming equipment to produce semi-finished goods, ingots and blooms.

4. Lamination

• Semi-finished goods, ingots and blooms, are processed by equipment called laminators and transformed into a variety of steel products whose names depend on their shape and/or chemical composition.