Engineering Materials steel production question?

Question

When producing steel, carbon monoxide is expelled - where does it come from?

- Liquid Oxygen combines with Coke (O+C = CO)
- Oxygen from Iron ore combines with Coke (FeO+C = FeC+CO)
- Incomplete combustion of Coke (C+O = CO)
- Carbon Dioxide breaks down (CO2 = CO+O)

thanks a lot

Answer 1

*The production of iron requires three important raw materials: iron ore, coal converted to "coke", and limestone.



Following are the stages where the CO can be evolved during iron making process:



**The coal is converted to a product called coke in coking ovens. The three raw materials are added to the top of the blast furnace. A blast of air containing oxygen is forced in from the bottom of the furnace. This causes the coke to burn with an intense heat of almost 2000 C. The reaction is carbon plus oxygen to produce carbon monoxide (incomplete combustion due to lack of air).

2C + O2 = CO

**The main reaction is then between the iron oxide, Fe2O3, with the carbon monoxide to produce molten iron metal and carbon dioxide. An alternate reaction is with the coke, C, to produce iron and more carbon monoxide. The molten iron collects on the bottom of the furnace and when cooled is called pig iron with many impurities.



Fe2O3+3C=2Fe+3CO



**Much of the carbon dioxide is reduced with more carbon from the coke to make more carbon monoxide.

**

1.At the high temperature at the bottom of the furnace, carbon dioxide reacts with carbon to produce carbon monoxide.

C +CO2=2CO

2.In the hotter parts of the furnace, the carbon itself also acts as a reducing agent. Notice that at these temperatures, the other product of the reaction is carbon monoxide, not carbon dioxide.



*Pl. go through following link:

http://www.chemguide.co.uk/inorganic/extraction/iron.html

Answer 2

Carbon monoxide is produced (by intention) in two places during steel making.



1) in the blast furnace the incomplete combustion of coke produces CO which is the main reducing agent of FeO (so C+O=CO then FeO+CO=Fe+CO2) [I know that these are not correct as it should be Fe2O3, but it gets confusing without the use of subscript]



2) during oxygen steelmaking carbon from the "hot metal" (along with sulphur and some phosphorus) is removed by the oxygen blow - this produces a lot of different products, one of which is CO.

The equation would be C(dissoved in Fe)+O2=CO

The CO also acts as a reducing agent in the "foam" which is formed by the blow - the chemistry gets very complicated when you look in detail.



I hope that helps

Answer 3

Steel is made from pig iron which contains a large percentage of carbon in the form of martensite. All steels contain carbon but in different amounts. stainless steel has other metals like nickel, chrome, moly, etc added to it for specific properties.

Low carbon steel is more ductile than high carbon steel but has lower strength.