Still the Iron Age: Iron and Steel in the Modern World

326 Pages·2016·6.97 MB·English

by  Vaclav Smil

Still the Iron Age
Iron and Steel in the Modern World
Vaclav Smil
Table of Contents
Cover image
Title page
Copyright
Preface and Acknowledgments
Previous Works by The Author
Chapter 1. Iron and Steel Before the Eighteenth Century: Slow Adoption,
Artisanal Production, and Scaling-Up
Abstract
Bloomery Iron
Blast Furnaces
Charcoal
Premodern Steel
Chapter 2. Rise of Modern Ferrous Metallurgy, 1700–1850: Coke, Blast
Furnaces, and Expensive Steel
Abstract
European and British Ironmaking before 1750
British Transition to Coke
Larger Furnaces and Hot Blast
Wrought Iron
Chapter 3. Iron and Steel Before WW I, 1850–1914: The Age of Affordable
Steel
Abstract
Blast Furnaces
Inexpensive Steel: Bessemer Converters and Open Hearths
New Markets for Steel
Steel in Transportation and Construction
Chapter 4. A Century of Advances, 1914–2014: Changing Leadership in Iron
and Steel Industry
Abstract
From WW I to the End of WW II
America’s Postwar Retreat
Japan in the Lead
Chinese Dominance
Chapter 5. Modern Ironmaking and Steelmaking: Furnaces, Processes, and
Casting
Abstract
New Blast Furnaces
Direct Reduced Iron
Basic Oxygen Furnaces
Electric Arc Furnaces
Continuous Casting
Diffusion and Improvements
Chapter 6. Materials in Modern Iron and Steel Production: Ores, Coke, Fluxes,
Scrap, and Other Inputs
Abstract
Materials for BFS and BOFS
Material Balances of Integrated Steelmaking
Steel Scrap
Material Balances of EAFs
Chapter 7. Energy Costs and Environmental Impacts of Iron and Steel
Production: Fuels, Electricity, Atmospheric Emissions, and Waste Streams
Abstract
Energy Accounting
Energy Cost of Steelmaking
Air and Water Pollution and Solid Wastes
Life Cycle Assessments
Chapter 8. Ubiquitous Uses of Steel: Sectoral Consumption and the Quest for
Quality
Abstract
Infrastructures and Buildings
Fuels and Electricity
Transportation
Industrial Equipment and Consumer Products
Chapter 9. Looking Back: Advances, Flows and Stocks
Abstract
A Century and a Half of Modern Steel
Industry’s State
Flows and Consumption Rates
Steel Stocks
Chapter 10. Looking Ahead: The Future of Iron and Steel
Abstract
Substitutions
Dematerialization
New Processes
Future Requirements
Appendix A. Units and Their Multiples and Submultiples
Basic SI Units
Other Units Used in the Text
Multiples Used in the SI
Submultiples Used in the SI
Appendix B. Some Basic Terms
Appendix C. Global and National Production of Pig Iron and Steel, 1800–2015
Appendix D. Production of Crude Steel, 1900–2014 (All figures in Mt/year)
References
Index
Copyright
Butterworth-Heinemann is an imprint of Elsevier
The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, UK
50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Copyright © 2016
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the
Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such
as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be
found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions.
This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under
copyright by the Publisher (other than as may be noted herein).
Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new
research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research
methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and
knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or
experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they
should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including
parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.
To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors,
contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to
persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise,
or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas
contained in the material herein.
ISBN: 978-0-12804233-5
ISBN: 978-0-12804233-5
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
For Information on all Butterworth-Heinemann publications visit our website
at http://store.elsevier.com/
Preface and Acknowledgments
My books are expressions of my preference for writing about fundamental
realities, be they natural or anthropogenic, and their complex interactions. That
is why I have written extensively on the Earth’s biosphere and its
transformations by humans, on production of foods and changing diets, on
energy resources and on material foundations of our civilization. Besides dealing
with these matters in systematic, universal and generalized manner (the best
example would be General Energetics, Global Ecology, Feeding the World,
Energy in Nature and Society, Harvesting the Biosphere and Making the Modern
World) I have taken some closer looks, writing books focusing on specific
fundamentals of modern civilization: on wood and other biofuels (Biomass
Energies), oil (Oil: A Beginner’s Guide), natural gas (Natural Gas: Fuel for the
21st Century), ammonia (Enriching the Earth), Diesel engines and gas turbines
(Prime Movers of Globalization), and meat (Should We Eat Meat?). This book is
simply a continuation of my efforts to deal with such fundamental realities and it
has been on my list of to do items since the early 1990s when I began to study
the long history and remarkable accomplishments of iron smelting and steel
making.
Those who appreciate the physical foundations of modern societies do not
need any convincing about the topic’s importance. Those who think that mobile
phones and Facebook and Twitter accounts are the fundamentals as well as the
pinnacles of modern civilization might find the book about iron and steel
inexplicably antiquated: their realities appear to be purely silicon-based. But
that, of course, demonstrates deep lack of understanding of how the world
works. Modern civilization could exist quite well without mobile phones and
“social media”; indeed, in the first instance it did so until the 1990s (beginning
of large-scale adoption of cellphones) and in the second instance until the late
2000s (when the Facebook membership took off). In contrast, none of its great
accomplishments—its surfeit of energy, its abundance of food, its high quality of
life, its unprecedented longevity and mobility and, indeed, its electronic
infatuations—would be possible without massive smelting of iron and
production (and increasingly also recycling) of steel.
In the 1830s Danish archeologist Christian Jürgensen Thomsen (1788–1865)
distinguished three great civilization eras based on their dominant hard
materials, with the Bronze Age following the Stone Age and preceding the Iron
Age (Thomsen, 1836). Transition from stone to bronze began about 3300 BCE
in the Near East and just a bit later in Europe, the onset of Iron Age was around
1200 BCE but it took another 700–1000 years before the metal became dominant
throughout Asia and Europe. When Thomsen made his division, the Iron Age
was mostly 2000–2500 years old, but the time of the greatest dependence on the
metal was still to come, and at the beginning of the twenty-first century no other
material has emerged to end that dominance. Ours is—still and more than ever—
the Iron Age although most of the metal is now deployed as many varieties of
steel, alloys of iron and carbon (typically less than 2% C) and often of other
metals that impart many desirable qualities absent in pure elemental iron.
The great nineteenth-century surge in iron smelting and steel production
continued during the twentieth century as the long-lasting US technical
leadership shifted to Japan after 1960. Four decades later the rapid expansion of
China’s economy brought the iron and steel output to unprecedented levels
during the first decade of the twenty-first century. By 2015 iron ore extraction
was more than 2 billion tonnes (Gt), the mass surpassed only by the annual
output of fossil fuels and bulk construction materials; pig (cast) iron production
(smelting of iron ores in blast furnaces) rose to more than 1 Gt; and the global
steel output (from pig iron or from recycled metal) reached about 1.7 Gt. That
output was about 60 times higher than in 1900, and roughly 20 times larger than
the aggregate smelting of aluminum, copper, zinc, lead and tin. And in per capita
terms worldwide steel output rose by an order of magnitude, from 20 kg/year in
1900 to about 230 kg/year by 2010.
Perhaps the best way to stress the importance of steel in modern society is to
note that so many components, parts, machines and assemblies are made of steel
and that just about everything around us is made or moved with it. Although
naked steel is not uncommon—ranging from such small items as needles, pins,
nails, construction, laboratory and medical tools to slender broadcasting towers,
wires, cables, rails and bridge spans and girders—most of the metal incorporated
in modern products is hidden (inside structures as reinforcing bars in concrete,
skeletons of large buildings, inside machines as engines and turbines or
underground in piles, pipelines, tunnels and mine props) or covered by layers of
paint (welded ship hulls, construction machinery, cars, appliances, storage
tanks).
The list of items and services whose reliability and affordability have been