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The journey of steel was quite interesting. Lots of inventions took place in the area of steel production. There was the contribution of many people, in making the steel like what we have it today. When you will look around, you will find many things made up of steel. Steel is a thing which is used by everyone, whether in the form of utensils, blades, pipes or in manufacturing of many types of equipments.  The journey of steel is too long but the production of steel had demand during 19th century because of the need of railway tracks. At that time the production of steel was very slow and at the same time costly too. But, an unexpected growth was to come for the steel industries. And, that was The Steel Man-Henry Bessemer. He introduced the world with the technique of reducing excess carbon from the molten iron, in 1856. The technique was to blow oxygen in the molten metal. He developed a converter which can heat up the iron and at the same time the oxygen could be blown through it to get the carbon out in the form of carbon dioxide after reacting with it. In this way the more pure form of the iron was found. This process was very fast and cheap too, the removal of carbon from iron was no more difficult but still that invention got failed because the necessary carbon was also removed in this process. And, the iron was left with too much oxygen. After that, a British man Robert used Manganese to remove oxygen from molten iron, if added in right quantity, although this was the solution to Bessemer's problem. But, the steel industries were still facing the problem of having phosphorus in the final product. Then, Sidney Gilchrist Thomas came up with the solution to the problem of phosphorus by adding limestone to the Bessemer’s process, in 1876. The limestone drew phosphorus from the pig iron into the slag, made the unwanted phosphorus removed. This invention initiated the growth of steel industries all over the world, because this process gave the assurance of making of steel from any iron ore in the world. Hence the cost of steel production decreased drastically.  German engineer Karl Wilhelm Siemens invented a furnace and named it as Open Hearth, in the 1860s. It was a large shallow furnace in which the pig iron can be processed to produce steel. This had given a new start to steel industries. These furnaces based on the technique of using high temperatures to burn off unwanted carbon and other impurities. These large furnaces were able to produce tons of steel. Well this was not it. As everything is keep enhancing its quality with the new inventions. The steel industry also introduced with a new one, even after many inventions. And, it was the Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) by Paul Heroult. The different technique which was used in this furnace was to pass an electric current through charged material; this was an exothermic oxidation reaction in which a large amount of heat is produced. The reaction was producing approx 1800°C heat which was more than enough for the production process. It got so much popularity in 20th century but now it became 33% of all steel processes. And, the reason is as usual another invention, Basic Oxygen Furnace. Basic Oxygen Furnace has the strongest influence on steel production and presently having 66% of steel production by it. The modern suppliers, like Nikalsteels stainless steel suppliers also use the same technique for production. In 1960s the process of separating oxygen from nitrogen is introduced in the basic oxygen furnaces. In basic oxygen furnaces, oxygen is blown through large quantity of molten iron and scraps steel. And, has more speed than any other process. This is not it; basic oxygen furnaces have less expense than open hearth.
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