What processes does iron go through, from being extracted from the ground to becoming metallic iron?
Iron ore removed by drilling and blasting and escavating from the deposits called run of mine ROM will be fed to crushers for making required size for feeding in to blast furnace. After crushing to an appropriate size, the coarser fraction of many hard, high-grade hematite ores can be fed directly into a blast furnace. The finer fraction and others, such as those from Yampi Sound, are friable; in the furnace, this material would form an impervious mass not readily susceptible to reduction. These must first be sintered – slightly melted and agglomerated into coherent cindery lumps of a suitable size. Much furnace feed is in the form of sintered ore. The nature and proportion of the impurities in the ore are also of great importance. For easy fluxing in the furnace, the proportion of silica should exceed that of alumina and both should be maintained within strict limits to maintain a manageable slag. Phosphorus and sulfur are the two impurities with which the steelmaker is most concerned
