Basic Oxygen Steelmaking

About 80 percent of the steel in Germany is produced using this method. For Basic-Oxygen Steelmaking oxygen is blown into the converter with the liquid steel mixture at different heights. The method is also called Linz-Donawitz Converter or LD-converter and is used to process low-phosphorous pig-iron.

Each blowing cycle takes about 20 minutes during which the liquid metal is heated from 1150 to 1650°C. For cooling purposes scrap metal is given into the mixture. Depending on the type of impurities in the pig-iron slag-forming surcharges are added.

Phosphorous-rich pig-iron is processed using the Linz-Donawitz-Arbed-Centre-National method (LDAC method). For this method there is a second blowing cycle during which lime is blown into the furnace together with the oxygen. This makes the reduction of phosphorous more effective.

In addition to these two methods there are more special methods for industrial steel production.