Iron and Steel Industries

Iron and Steel Industry

Iron and Steel Industry in India is on an upswing because of the strong global and domestic demand. India's rapid economic growth and soaring demand by sectors like infrastructure, real estate and automobiles, at home and abroad, has put Indian steel industry on the global map. According to the latest report by International Iron and Steel Institute (IISI), India is the seventh largest steel producer in the world. 

History of Iron and Steel Industry in India

Iron and Steel industry in the country has experienced a sustainable growth since the independence of the country. A humble beginning of the modern steel industry was reached in India at Kulti in West Bengal in the year 1870. But the outset of bigger production became noticeable with the establishment of a steel plant in Jamshedpur in Bihar in 1907. It started production in 1912. The new township was named after Jamshed ji Tata.

It was, however, only after Independence that the steel industry was able to find a strong foothold in the country. Excluding the Jamshedpur plant of the Tatas, all are in the public sector and looked after by Steel Authority of India Ltd. (SAIL).

Some other Industries

Bhilai and Bokaro Steel plant were set up with Soviet alliance. Durgapur and Rourkela came up with British and West German technical expertise, respectively.

Industry Structure

The Iron and steel Industry in India has 2 separate divisions:

Integrated producers

Secondary producers

Integrated producers

Amongst the Integrated producers, the major producers include Tata Iron and Steel Company Limited (TISCO), Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL) and Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), who generate steel by converting iron ore.

Secondary producers

The Secondary producers like Ispat Industries, Lloyds steel and Essar Steel, create steel through the process of melting scrap iron. These are mainly small steel plants and produce steel in electric furnaces, using scrap and sponge iron. They produce both mild steel and alloy steel of given specifications.

Iron and Steel Industries of India

THE BEGINNING

The Indian iron and steel industry is nearly a

century old, with Tata Iron & Steel Co as the first

integrated steel plant to be set up in 1907. The

steel industry is expanding worldwide. The

economic modernization processes in these

countries are driving the sharp rise in demand for

steel.

Indian Iron and steel Industry can be divided into two main sectors Public sector and Private sector.

There are three major integrated steel players in India, namely Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), Tata Iron and Steel Company Limited (TISCO) and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL).

India’s export of Iron and Steel(In

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Indian Steel King: Tata Steel• Tata Steel is the world's 6th largest steel company

with an existing annual crude steel capacity of 28 million tons. Asia's first integrated steel plant and

• India's largest integrated private sector steel company is now the world's second most geographically diversified steel producer. Tata Steel plans to grow and globalise through organic and inorganic routes.

• Its 5 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) Jamshedpur Works plans to double its capacity by 2010. The Company also has three greenfield steel projects in the states of Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh and proposed steel making facilities in Vietnam and Bangladesh.

Jamshedji Tata

Iron and Steel industries of USA

The first iron works in America, called Hammersmith, began operation in 1647 in Saugus, Massachusetts, but lasted only five years. When Americans switched fuels from charcoal or wood to coal in the early nineteenth century, larger operations became possible. The discovery of huge iron ore deposits in the northern Great Lakes region during the 1840s gave a further boost to production.

American iron-masters developed their own variations of these English techniques, depending on local resources like the quality of their iron and the efficiency of their fuel. A means of automating iron production was not developed until the 1930s.

In the nineteenth century, the American iron market produced a wide variety of products. Stoves, gun parts, cannons, and machinery were among key early uses for iron. Iron also played a crucial role in the development of railroads.

The U.S. Steel Corporation

U.S. Steel was the first business in history to be valued by the stock market at over one billion dollars U.S. Steel's ten divisions reflected the diversity of steel products made at that time, including steel wire, steel pipe, structural steel (for bridges, buildings, and ships), sheet steel (which would go largely for automobile bodies in subsequent decades), and tin plate (once used for roofing shingles, it would increasingly go to make tin cans).

World War II impact on Steel Industries

• During World War II, industry production increased sharply because of steel's importance to war mobilization. Some of this increase was a result of production returning to full capacity after the depression.

• India pushed forward for making Iron and Steel for Japanese Army.

• Meanwhile, the United States controlled 60 percent of the world's steelmaking potential.

A LOOK AT GLOBAL PRODUCTION(I

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Based on study: 2009-2011

Processing Of Iron and Steel

MINING

Mining is the first step in the production of iron and steel.

Earth is excavated deep in search of iron ore.

Breaking and cutting of iron ore takes place to receive raw iron.

* The Bloomery Iron Making Process

Raw Materials from the iron ore are put in a particularly hot fire lead in the embers of the fire. This is done to get the mixture of Iron Ore and Charcoal that is burnt with the help of a blast of air from hand worked bellows.

THE FINERY & CHAFERY

Iron tapped from the blast furnace is pig iron, and contains significant amounts of carbon and silicon. To produce malleable wrought iron, it needs to undergo a further process. In the finery, remelting of pig iron takes place so as to oxidise the carbon (and silicon). This produces a lump of iron known as a bloom. This is consolidated using a water-powered hammer. The next stages were undertaken by the hammering, because the bloom is highly porous, and its open spaces are full of slag, it is to be beaten with a hammer, to drive the molten slag out of it, and then to draw the bloom out into a bar to produce bar iron. In the course of doing so, reheating of the iron, takes place in chafery to remove any impurities as such impurities in any mineral fuel would affect the quality of the iron.

The puddling furnace is a metalmaking technology used to create steel from the pig iron produced in a blast furnace. The furnace is constructed to pull the hot air over the iron without it coming into direct contact with the fuel, a system generally known as a reverberatory furnace or open hearth furnace. The major advantage of this system is keeping the impurities of the fuel separated from the charge.

The Puddling

Separation of quality

OAfter the bar iron is refined. It is ready to be classified. Iron is separated according to its qualities. Such as Cementation, Crucible, Bessemer steel.

• A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally iron.

• In a blast furnace, fuel and ore and flux (limestone) are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while air is blown into the bottom of the chamber, so that the chemical reactions take place throughout the furnace as the material moves downward. The end products are usually molten metal and slag phases tapped from the bottom, and flue gases exiting from the top of the furnace. The downward flow of the ore and flux in contact with an upflow of hot, carbon monoxide rich combustion gases is a countercurrent exchange process.

WHAT IS A BLAST FURNACE?

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