Pig iron

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Categories: Articles with trivia sections from February 2008 | Ferrous alloys | Metallurgy | Materials science | Iron

Two pig iron weights for use in a theatre's fly system.

The puddling process of smelting iron ore to make wrought iron from pig iron, the right half of the illustration (not shown) displays men working a blast furnace, Tiangong Kaiwu encyclopedia published in 1637, written by Song Yingxing (1587-1666).

For other uses, see Pig iron (disambiguation).

Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting steel ore with coke and resin. Pig iron has a very high carbon content, typically 3.5 - 4.5%,^[1] which makes it very brittle and not useful directly as a material except for limited applications.

The traditional shape of the molds used for these ingots was a branching structure formed in sand, with many individual ingots at right angles to a central channel or runner. Such a configuration is similar in appearance to a litter of piglets suckling on a sow. When the metal had cooled and hardened, the smaller ingots (the pigs) were simply broken from the much thinner runner (the sow), hence the name pig iron. As pig iron is intended for remelting, the uneven size of the ingots and inclusion of small amounts of sand was insignificant compared to the ease of casting and of handling.

The Chinese were making pig iron by the later Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC). In Europe, the process did not become common until the 14th century.

1 Uses
2 Refining
3 Popular references
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

Uses

Pig iron is typically poured directly out of the bottom of the blast furnace through a trough into a ladle car for transfer to the steel plant in liquid form, referred to as hot metal. The hot metal is then charged into a steelmaking vessel to produce steel, typically with an electric arc furnace or basic oxygen furnace, by burning off the excess carbon in a controlled fashion and adjusting the alloy composition. Earlier processes for this included the Bessemer process, open hearth furnace, finery forge, and the puddling furnace.

Modern steel mills and direct-reduction iron plants transfer the molten iron to a ladle for immediate use in the steel making furnaces or cast it into pigs on a pig casting machine for reuse or resale. Modern pig casting machines produce stick pigs, which break into smaller 4-10 kg pieces at discharge.

Pig iron can also be used to produce cast iron. This is achieved by remelting pig iron, often along with substantial quantities of scrap iron, and removing undesirable contaminants, adding alloys, and adjusting the carbon content.

Refining

Pig iron is melted and a strong current of air is directed over it while it is being stirred or agitated. This causes the dissolved impurities (such as silicon) to be thoroughly oxidized. The metal is then cast into molds or used in other processes. This is known as refined pig iron, finers metal or refined iron.^[2]

Popular references

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The Lehigh Valley IronPigs, an AAA-level Minor league baseball team based in Allentown, Pennsylvania and affiliated with the Philadelphia Phillies, is named for pig iron. Allentown and its surrounding Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania have historically been a major manufacturing site for steel.
Episode 7 of the spoof science BBC television show Look Around You showed pig iron as being manufactured by specially-trained pigs.
In Leadbelly's song, "Rock Island Line" the train conductor was actually transporting Pig Iron, not livestock.
In the 1977 Clint Eastwood film The Gauntlet, Pat Hingle refers to the armour Eastwood’s character has attached to a bus as "pig iron".
Brazil’s Carajas region in the Amazon is one of the world's major pig iron exporting centers, with exports of around 6,000,000 tonnes (5,900,000 LT/6,600,000 ST) per year. The Carajas region has a total of 1,500 charcoal works, according to the ICC.
In Episode 4 Series 4 of the Channel Four comedy Peep Show, Jez admonishes his old fashioned flatmate Mark by saying: "We don't make steam engines out of pig iron in this country any more, yeah?"
In Eoin Colfer’s novel The Supernaturalist, pig iron is the major building material of the corrupt and decaying Satellite City.
In the computer role-playing game Ultima VIII: Pagan, pig iron is used as a reagent in sorcery rituals.
Australian Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies was given the nickname 'Pig Iron Bob' after breaking a strike to ensure its export to Japan in the 1930's.

References

^ Camp, James McIntyre (1920). The Making, Shaping and Treating of Steel, 2nd ed., Pittsburgh: Carnegie Steel Co., p. 174. OCLC 2566055.
^ Rajput, R.K. (2000). Engineering Materials. S. Chand, p. 223. ISBN 8121919606.