Mini Mill Steel Making Process

The electric arc furnace process or mini mill does not involve iron making.

Mini mill steel making process. Mini mill plants may specialize for example in making coils of rod for wire drawing use or pipe or in special sections for transportation and agriculture. A typical steelmaking arc furnace is the source of steel for a mini mill which may make bars or strip product. The steel is then shaped into semi finished products such as billets blooms or slabs. The exact mixture is determined by each customer s specifications.

Mini mills can be sited relatively near the markets for steel products so the transport requirements are less than for an integrated mill which would commonly be sited near a harbor for better access to shipping. In the mini mill process high grade steel scrap is combined with pig iron hot briquetted iron hbi and other metals and melted at a temperature of approximately 3 000 degrees fahrenheit in an electric arc furnace eaf. The modern steel production process methods for manufacturing steel have evolved significantly since industrial production began in the late 19th century. It also shows how mini mills streamline this process considerably.

Salzgitter the process shown above is illustrative only and is not designed to show the steelmaking process in detail. It reuses existing steel avoiding the need for raw materials and their processing. Often a mini mill will be constructed in an area with no other steel production to take advantage of local markets resources or lower cost labour. Ferrous scrap is refined and melted in the eaf after which the molten steel is often further refined in a ladle metallurgy process.

These semi finished products may be further processed into finished. In a mini mills electricity is used to melt primarily scrap steel. The diagrams below show the steps that traditional steel mills must take to make steel from ore coke and limestone. Modern methods however are still based on the same premise as the original bessemer process which uses oxygen to lower the carbon content in iron.