Railway Scraps
Railway Scrap
The iron and steel manufacturing process begins with mining raw materials, which must then be carefully processed to ensure quality finished products that meet specifications. There are more than 3,500 different grades of steel with many different physical, chemical, and environmental properties. Adding metals such as nickel, chromium, and tungsten produce a wide range of alloy steels such as stainless steel.
Steel is an alloy consisting mostly of iron and less than 2% carbon. Iron ore is, therefore, essential for the production of steel, which in turn is essential in maintaining a strong industrial base. 98% of mined iron ore is used to make steel.
Stainless Steel Sheet
As iron occurs only as iron oxides in the earth’s crust, the ores must be converted, or ‘reduced’, using carbon. The primary source of this carbon is coking coal. Coal is a key raw material in steel production. Coal is primarily used as a solid fuel to produce electricity and heat through combustion. Coke, made by carburising coal (i.e. heating in the absence of oxygen at high temperatures), is the primary reducing agent of iron ore. Coke reduces iron ore to molten iron saturated with carbon, called hot metal.
