Conventional or electrical blast furnace route?

The production process of ArcelorMittal Gent is based upon the so-called “conventional” blast furnace route. This entails that we convert iron ore into liquid pig iron in the blast furnaces by adding carbon. In the steel shop, we then burn the impurities that are still present in the pig iron, by injecting pure oxygen. As this process unleashes a lot of heath, we add scrap in order to cool the matter down. This is how pig iron is transformed into liquid steel whilst being extremely energy efficient.

Is there no other way to produce steel? There is: the so-called “electrical” route which starts from scrap that is melted into steel in the electric arc oven. The electrical route is mainly used for the production of long products (reinforcement bars, profile shapes and wire rod). For flat steel sheets, used for instance in cars and household electrical appliances, the conventional method is best suitable. This has to do with the required internal purity and surface quality of steel.