Metallurgical Process Advances Historically Reduce Resource Use and Pollution

Pyro-reduction of ores to metal products developed markedly through the industrial revolution into the great depression. Nineteenth century resource and environmental sustainability were haphazardly improved by many process changes, although the motivation was primarily reduction in labor, feed stocks and fuel. Some notable achievements were coke and hot air for blast furnaces (later from waste heat stoves), puddling of wrought iron and steel ingot production with convertors advancing into oxygen use and continuous slab, billet and strip casting. Although advances in one sector were often counteracted by fall-backs in others, there was progress in that the resource consumption and pollution per unit of production was decreased. Improvements in the 2 decades following WW2 were mixed but popular notice of environmental hazards forced governments to legislate pollution controls and initiate steps in resource conservation. The energy crisis of the 1970’s saw an industrial energy-saving campaign and legislation of technology assessment procedures. Up until mid 18th Century, the training of iron masters depended on apprenticeship with some formalized knowledge from medieval books such as those of Biringuccio (1540) and Agricola (1556). The advances were very slow partly due to absence of scientific concepts of the smelting process. Nevertheless, some iron masters succeeded in improving the process and described procedures to instruct others. With the surge of steam power and the reverberatory puddling process for ductile wrought iron (WI), machinery changed from wood (iron strap reinforced) to WI machinery. With the clarification of the reduction and oxidation mechanisms by Cavendish and Lavoisier (~1780), productivity in iron production surged. The mechanical testing and microscopy of Kirkaldy (1862) spurred understanding of processing and properties of WI and steel. The various forms of C in steels were determined by chemists at the end of the 19th Century. It also became possible to control metal and slag chemistry in the open hearth furnace. But understanding of the transformations during heat treatment of steel only came in the first decades of the 20th Century.