121 Steel Production
25.4.3: Steel Production
Before 1860, steel was expensive and produced in small quantities, but the development of crucible steel technique by Benjamin Huntsman in the 1740s,the Bessemer process in the 1850s, and the Siemens-Martin process in the 1850s-1860s resulted in the mass production of steel, one of the key advancements behind the Second Industrial Revolution.
Learning Objective
Postulate the effects of improved steel production on the progression of industry.
Key Points
- Steel is an alloy of iron and other elements, primarily carbon, that is widely used in construction and other applications because of its high tensile strength and low cost. Steel’s base metal is iron. It was first produced in antiquity, but two decades before the Industrial Revolution an improvement was made in the production of steel, which at the time was an expensive commodity used only where iron would not do.
- Benjamin Huntsman developed his crucible steel technique in the 1740s. He was able to make satisfactory cast steel in clay pot crucibles, each holding about 34 pounds of blister steel. A flux was added, and they were covered and heated by coke for about three hours. The molten steel was then poured into molds and the crucibles reused. For a long time Huntsman exported his whole output to France as local producers refused to work with steel harder than they were already using.
- Steel is often cited as the first of several new areas for industrial mass-production that characterize the Second Industrial Revolution. Before about 1860, steel was still an expensive product. The problem of mass-producing cheap steel was solved in 1855 by Henry Bessemer with the introduction of the Bessemer converter at his steelworks in Sheffield, England. Further experiments by Göran Fredrik Göransson and Robert Forester Mushet allowed Bessemer to perfect what would be known as the Bessemer process.
- Although initially Bessemer met with rebuffs and was forced to undertake the exploitation of his process himself, eventually licences were applied for in such numbers that Bessemer received royalties exceeding a million pounds sterling. By 1870, Bessemer steel was widely used for ship plate. The Bessemer process also made steel railways competitive in price. Experience quickly proved steel had much greater strength and durability and could handle the heavier and faster engines and cars.
- After 1890, the Bessemer process was gradually supplanted by open-hearth steel making. Carl Wilhelm Siemens developed the Siemens regenerative furnace in the 1850s. This furnace operated at a high temperature by using regenerative preheating of fuel and air for combustion. In 1865, Pierre-Émile Martin took out a license from Siemens and applied his regenerative furnace for making steel. The Siemens-Martin process was slower and thus easier to control. It also permitted the melting and refining of large amounts of scrap steel, further lowering steel production costs and recyclin