|
|
|
 |
|
|
METAMORPHOSIS #0407_3/ 2007
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Paintings: Landscape 2 | | Medium: | "iron rust" on stretched canvas | | Size (inches): | 36 x 24 | | Size (mm): | 914 x 610 | | Catalog #: | PA_0109 | | Description: | Signed, titled, date, copyright in magic ink on the reverse.
Iron + oxygen + water = Iron rust.
"Creating Iron" by Marshall Brain.
All of the iron ores contain iron combined with oxygen. To make iron from iron ore, you need to eliminate the oxygen to create pure iron.
The most primitive facility used to refine iron from iron ore is called a bloomery. In a bloomery, you burn charcoal with iron ore and a good supply of oxygen (provided by a bellows or blower). Charcoal is essentially pure carbon. The carbon combines with oxygen to create carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide (releasing lots of heat in the process). Carbon and carbon monoxide combine with the oxygen in the iron ore and carry it away, leaving iron metal.
In a bloomery, the fire does not get hot enough to melt the iron completely, so you are left with a spongy mass containing iron and silicates from the ore (the bloom). By heating and hammering the bloom, the glassy silicates mix into the iron metal to create wrought iron. Wrought iron is tough and easy to work, making it perfect for creating tools in a blacksmith shop.
The more advanced way to smelt iron is in a blast furnace (see this extremely nice blast furnace animation). A blast furnace is charged with iron ore, charcoal or coke (coke is charcoal made from coal) and limestone (CaCO3). Huge quantities of air blast in at the bottom of the furnace. The calcium in the limestone combines with the silicates to form slag. At the bottom of the blast furnace, liquid iron collects along with a layer of slag on top. Periodically, you let the liquid iron flow out and cool.
The liquid iron typically flows into a channel and indentations in a bed of sand. Once it cools, this metal is known as pig iron.
To create a ton of pig iron, you start with 2 tons of ore, 1 ton of coke and half-ton of limestone. The fire consumes 5 tons of air. The temperature reaches almost 3000 degrees F (about 1600 degrees C) at the core of the blast furnace!
Pig iron contains 4 percent to 5 percent carbon and is so hard and brittle that it is almost useless. You do one of two things with pig iron:
*You melt it, mix it with slag and hammer it to eliminate most of the carbon (down to 0.3 percent) and create wrought iron. Wrought iron is the stuff a blacksmith works with to create tools, horseshoes and so on. When you heat wrought iron, it is malleable, bendable, weldable and very easy to work with.
*You create steel
-science.howstuffworks.com/iron3.htm
| | | send price request |
|
|
|
|
|
Gallery opening
500 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1820 (Between 42nd and 43rd)
...
|
|
more
|
|
