Massive blast furnaces are required to make pig iron.
Pig iron is the most basic form of iron after it is first extracted from the iron ore. Previously, pig iron was cast into individual ingots then transformed into other forms of iron, or most commonly into steel. Pig iron is still created in order to make steel, but now the process often takes place at the same facility. The pig iron is created and immediately put into a secondary process while still in its liquid form to make the ultimately desired metal rather than wasting time casting it into ingots beforehand.
Instructions
1. Collect the iron ore. This is typically done through large scale mining operations that extract massive amounts of rock from the ground. The most common type of iron ore is known as Hematite. Magnetite and Taconite are also types of iron ore.
2. Load a blast furnace with the iron ore.
3. Load the blast furnace with the other required ingredients to make pig iron. These are coke or charcoal and limestone.
4. Run the blast furnace. The blast furnace jets air as hot as 1,000 degrees Celsius into the chamber where the coke, limestone and ore are contained. A chemical reaction then takes place. Carbon monoxide is created as the coke burns and the iron ore melts. The carbon monoxide then reduces the iron ore into actual iron. This is essentially the removal of the oxygen atoms from the iron. The limestone is also burnt during this process and becomes calcium oxide. This serves the purpose of purifying the iron by removing acidity.
5. Distribute the iron accordingly. In a modern day refinery, it will be kept liquid and moved on to a process to create steel. In older refineries, it would have been poured into a row of molds made in a dry sandy floor and cast into bars. The way these bars looked as they were being fed from a central trough of iron is where the name "pig iron" comes from. Workers through the process resembled piglets feeding from their mother.
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