How does the bessemer reaction work

When oxygen passes through the molten metal, it would react with the carbon, releasing carbon dioxide and creating a purer iron. The process was both inexpensive and fast, it removed carbon and silicon from iron in only a few minutes but was still strong. There was still a problem, though. His father, Anthony, spent some years working for the Paris Mint, where he had developed a machine for the production of steel dies that was used to make medallions.

Throughout his life, Bessemer was a prolific inventor, and he had at least patents to his name. The patents largely revolve around manufacturing processes, spanning iron, steel, sugar, glass, ordnance, and even a ship with gimbal-mounted cabins so that passengers would not get sea-sick as Bessemer himself frequently did. Not all his inventions were commercial successes: a process for producing a continuous strip of plate glass did not find commercial backing — but the experience with furnaces that Bessemer gained from the exercise proved to be invaluable.

His first war-inspired invention was a grooved artillery projectiles that could be fired from smooth-bore guns. But the French commandant to which Bessemer was demonstrating the projectiles believed that they were too heavy to be fired safely from cast iron guns, which were notorious for shattering.

Bessemer knew that steel would not have this limitation, but its cost at the time made it far too expensive to use in mass-produced weapons. At the time, steel — essentially de-carbonised iron with a few added other elements — was far too expensive to be used in any large quantities and its application was restricted to cutlery, springs, and the like.

The main source of steel at the time was so-called Blister steel, produced by heating carbon-free wrought iron from Sweden, which was naturally low in impurities, between layers of coal for up to six weeks at a time.

This did add sufficient carbon to produce steel, but was a very laborious and time-consuming process. Instead, engineers used cast iron for everything from bridges to ships and railway rails. Bessemer set out to find a way of making steel from brittle pig iron, which contains significant amounts of carbon.

The hotter you could get the pot, the easier it was to keep the iron as a liquid and the easier it was to remove the impurities. His huge breakthrough came when he invented a vessel, that he later described as a converter which had an open top and allowed you to force air in through the bottom.

The vessel was filled with molten iron and air pushed through it to chemically react with the unwanted materials. This drove the carbon out of the iron and allowed the waste slag to be easily removed from the top of the liquid. The flames from the top of the converter reached as high as 10 metres and the steelmaker knew that when the flames died down, the conversion was complete. Set a class size. Powered by. Up Next Call Us. Email Us. Contact Us.

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