Iron And Steel Industry

One of the technologies that made the greatest impact on our society would be the refining of the iron through the iron and steel industry. Iron is used in many products, particularly commercial, carbon-rich iron, also called steel. Everything from cars and trains to bridges and skyscrapers depend on steel and iron to be built strong and durable.

The iron and steel industry turns iron ore, the naturally occurring form of iron, into steel as well as many different kinds of iron. One of the older types of iron used was wrought iron, which is pure iron together with iron silicate. It is rolled through mills many times until it takes on a structure that is much like wood. Wrought iron does not contain any carbon, and is not produced commercially by the iron and steel industry anymore. Most buildings and other structures, most commonly old bridges, that were build over a century ago will still have wrought iron.

Carbon steels is another type of steel produced by the iron and steel industry. These are steels that contain less than 1.5% of carbon. Generally, the more carbon that is added to iron, the stronger the tensile strength of iron becomes. But this is only up to a certain point, after which adding any more carbon would simply make it brittle. To improve the machineability of carbon steel, sulfur or lead is added to it. The metal is then heated until it becomes a cherry red color, then quenched in water or warm brine and tempered.

The iron and steel industry also produces alloy steels, which are useful because carbon steels can only be hardened up to a certain depth, which meant that hardened steel was not available from the industry until they manufactured alloy steels.

One of the most important metals used for alloying is chrome. Chrome allows steel to be hardened more and increases its resistance to high temperatures. Vanadium, nickel, molybdenum and tungsten are all metals that make steel stronger and allow to be harder.

Many of us today, talk about the “iron and steel industry” as if it was one industry, but historically speaking, they came from two separate products. The steel industry was always used, and is still used today, to indicate economic progress, because steel plays such an important role in the infrastructure of many markets, and can therefore give us a good sign of a country's overall economic development.

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