Analysis of Iron and Steel

Iron and Steel

The refining of the heavy metal element iron can be considered as one of the technologies with the greatest impact on today's society. This is primarily because iron makes a series of modern products, particularly commercial iron that is commonly known as steel (which is rich in carbon). Iron and steel are increasingly used to make several modern products and items such as cars, skyscrapers, tractors, rails, guns, bridges, ships, and trains. The increased use of iron and steel in the manufacturing of these products is attributable to the fact that they make them strong. However, the importance of iron can be traced back to the Iron Age period where primitive societies learned how to refine it and use it in making several products, tools, and items. The significance of iron and steel in today's manufacturing processes can be understood through examining these metals with regards to their advantages.

Overview of Iron and Steel

Iron is a soft metal that is easily shaped since its atoms are organized in a regular way that enables layers of atoms to slide over each other. However, poor iron is considered too soft for several uses in the manufacturing processes (British Broadcasting Corporation, n.d.). When extracted from the blast furnace, iron is an alloy of approximately 96% iron that comprises carbon and other impurities. At this stage, the alloy is hard but too fragile for most uses, especially in manufacturing several products. Consequently, iron from the blast furnace is mostly converted into steel through eliminating some of the carbon and other impurities. Iron is the Earth's second most common metal after aluminum since it reacts readily with moist air or oxygen. Similar to aluminum, iron exists inside the Earth in the form of oxides or seven main ores i.e. raw, rocky minerals obtained from Earth. These seven main ores are siderite, goethite, hematite, limonite, magnetite, taconite, and pyrite. The different ores from which iron is extracted or mined contain different amounts or levels of iron.

The physical properties of iron include the fact that it's a silvery-white metal that can be easily shaped or soft enough to cut through using a knife albeit relatively difficult. Moreover, iron can be hammered into sheets or used to create wires. Similar to most metals, iron conducts heat and electricity appropriately, which makes it easy to magnetize. The chemical properties of iron include its reactions with moist air to generate a flaky, reddish-brown oxide that is known as rust (Woodford, 2015). Generally, iron easily and readily combines with oxygen, which makes it increasingly difficult to see or use pure iron. Apart from its reaction with moist air, iron also reacts with other elements like silicon, carbon, halogens like chlorine, and sulfur. Iron compounds are generally divided into two major groups i.e. ferrous and ferric iron compounds. Ferrous iron compounds have a chemical combining capability of +2 whereas ferric iron compounds have a chemical combining capability of +3. Ferric iron compounds are used to manufacture magnetic materials such as computer hard drives and cassette tapes as well as in manufacturing several industrial chemicals.

There are different kinds of iron including pig iron, which is basic raw iron that is produced in the form of chunky molded blocks called pigs (Woodford, 2015). This type of iron is obtained through heating an iron ore that is rich in iron oxide in a blast furnace. The second type is cast iron, which is basically liquid iron that has been cast. It is poured into a mold and permitted to cool or harden in order to create a complete structural shape like a gear or pipe. Unlike pig iron, cast iron is hard and fragile, which makes it nearly impossible to shape even when heated and it rusts very easily. The third type is wrought iron, which is a completely different material that is produced through combining liquid iron with certain slag. This process generates an iron alloy that comprises significantly lower carbon content or levels. In comparison to cast iron, wrought iron is relatively softer and less tough and can be easily shaped as well as less vulnerable to rusting.

Steel can be described as iron that has been converted through the removal of some of the carbon and other impurities. The removal of carbon from iron entails blowing oxygen into molten iron. The oxygen in turn reacts with the carbon to generate carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, which is eliminated from the molten iron. However, sufficient oxygen is blown into the molten iron in order to produce steel with the desired levels of carbon. In addition, alloys with properties that are suitable for certain uses are usually generated through the addition of other metals into the molten iron such as chromium and vanadium. Since the production of steel involves the addition of different metals to produce alloys for specific purposes, there are several different kinds of steel. These different kinds of steel are usually dependent on the elements that are mixed with the molten iron when removing some of the carbon and other impurities.