Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting iron ore with a high-carbon fuel such as coke, usually with limestone as a flux. Charcoal and anthracite have also been used as fuel. Pig iron has a very high carbon content, typically 3.5–4.5%, which makes it very brittle and not useful directly as a material except for limited applications.
The traditional shape of the molds used for these ingots was a branching structure formed in sand, with many individual ingots at right angles to a central channel or runner. Such a configuration is similar in appearance to a litter of piglets suckling on a sow. When the metal had cooled and hardened, the smaller ingots (the pigs) were simply broken from the much thinner runner (the sow), hence the name pig iron. As pig iron is intended for remelting, the uneven size of the ingots and the inclusion of small amounts of sand caused only insignificant problems considering the ease of casting and handling them.
Other articles related to "iron, pig iron, pigs, pig":
... of the 1800s, the Lackawanna Valley in Pennsylvania was rich in anthracite coal and iron deposits ... Slocum's Hollow (now Scranton) to establish an iron forge ... The Scrantons focused instead on manufacturing pig iron using a blast furnace ...
... A blast furnace converts raw iron ore into pig iron, which can be remelted in a cupola furnace to produce cast iron ... The earliest specimens of cast iron found in China date to the 5th century BCE during the late Spring and Autumn Period, yet the oldest discovered blast furnaces date to the 3rd century BCE and ... BCE) established a government monopoly over the iron industry in 117 BCE (most of the discovered iron works sites built before this date were merely foundries which recast ...
... Pig iron can refer to Pig iron, an intermediate form of iron produced from iron ore and is subsequently worked into steel or wrought iron Pig Iron - The Album by Anti-Nowhere League Pig Iron Theatre Company ...
... Today, pig iron is typically poured directly out of the bottom of the blast furnace through a trough into a ladle car for transfer to the steel mill in mostly liquid form in this state, the pig iron is referred to ... Modern steel mills and direct-reduction iron plants transfer the molten iron to a ladle for immediate use in the steel making furnaces or cast it into pigs on a pig-casting machine for ... Modern pig casting machines produce stick pigs, which break into smaller 4–10 kg pieces at discharge ...
... structures were made of wrought or cast iron ... In the Bessemer process, molten pig iron is converted to steel by blowing air through it after it was removed from the furnace ... The air blast burned the carbon and silicon out of the pig iron, releasing heat and causing the temperature of the molten metal to rise ...
Famous quotes containing the words iron and/or pig:
“Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.”
—Walter De La Mare (1873–1956)
“A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and and not by a but.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)