Monday, 29 October 2007

Bessemer Process

The first cheap method of making steel, invented by Henry Bessemer in England in 1856. It has since been superseded by more efficient steel-making processes, such as the basic–oxygen process. In the Bessemer process compressed air is blown into the bottom of a converter, a furnace shaped like a cement mixer, containing molten pig iron. The excess carbon in the iron burns out, other impurities form a slag, and the furnace is emptied by tilting.

From http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0016421.html

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