Primary steelmaking

Primary steelmaking consists of refining of hot metal or scrap +hot metal to steel in a) converter and b) Electric furnace. The objective is to refine hot metal to the nearly desired chemistry.

a)Types of converter steelmaking

• In converter steelmaking pure oxygen is blown from top through a water cooled lance fitted with multi-hole nozzles. This technology of refining of hot metal is called top blown steelmaking.
• In another version of converter steelmaking oxygen is blown from top and bath is gas stirred through the bottom. These are called combined top blowing and bottom stirred processes.
• In some converters,  is blown from top and bottom and these processes are called top and bottom blowing, Duplex blowing or hybrid blowing.
• In some converters oxygen is blown through the bottom and the process is bottom blown converter. This variant is not popular amongst steelmakers

It is important to note that in all different types of converter steelmaking practices, a pear shaped vessel is used and blast furnace hot metal is refined to plain carbon steel. Some amount of scrap is also used.