6. Ferrous metallurgy
Ferrous metallurgy involves processes and alloys based on iron. It began far back in-
prehistory. The earliest surviving iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were
made from meteoritic iron-nickel. By the end of the 2nd millennium BC iron was being
produced from iron ores from South of the Saharan Africa to China. The use of wrought
iron was known in the 1st millennium BC. During the medieval period, means were found in
Europe of producing wrought iron from cast iron (in this context known as pig iron) using
finery. For all these processes, charcoal was required as fuel.
Steel (with a carbon content between pig iron and wrought iron) was first produced in
antiquity as a South Indian alloy, its Wootz process of production exported before the fourth
century BC to ancient China, Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Archaeological evidence
of cast iron appears in 5th century BC China. New methods of producing it by carburizing
bars of iron in the cementation process were devised in the 17th century. In the Industrial
Revolution, new methods of producing bar iron without charcoal were devised and these were
later applied to produce steel. In the late 1850s, Henry Bessemer invented a new steelmaking
process, involving blowing air through molten pig iron, to produce mild steel. This and other
19th century and later processes have led to wrought iron no longer being produced.
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10. Iron smelting and the Iron Age
Iron smelting the extraction of usable metal from oxidized iron ores is more difficult
than tin and copper smelting. While these metals and their alloys can be cold-worked or
melted in relatively simple furnaces (such as the kilns used for pottery) and cast into molds,
smelted iron requires hot-working and can be melted only in specially designed furnaces.
Thus it is not surprising that humans only mastered the technology of smelted iron after
several millennia of bronze metallurgy.
The place and time for the discovery of iron smelting is not known, partly because of the diff
iculty of distinguishing metal extracted from nickel-containing ores from hot-worked
meteoritic iron. The archaeological evidence seems to point to the Middle East area, during
the Bronze Age in the 3rd millennium BC. However iron artifacts remained a rarity until the
12th centuryBC.
The Iron Age is conventionally defined by the widespread use of steel weapons and tools,
alongside or replacing bronze ones. That transition happened at different times in different
places, as the technology spread through the Old World. Mesopotamia was fully into the Iron
Age by 900 BC. Although Egypt produced iron artifacts, bronze remained dominant there
until the conquest by Assyria in 663 BC. The Iron Age started in Central Europe around
500 BC, and in India and China sometime between 1200 and 500 BC.[8] Around 500
BC, Nubian became a major manufacturer and exporter of iron. This was after the Nubians
were expelled from Egypt by the Assyrians, who used iron weapons.
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15. ecycling and pollution control
Due to its extensive use, non-ferrous scrap metal is usually recycled.
The secondary materials in scrap are vital to the metallurgy
industry, as the production of new metals often needs them. Some
recycling facilities resmelt and recast non-ferrous materials;
the dross is collected and stored onsite while the metal fumes are
filtered and collected. Non-ferrous scrap metals are sourced from
industrial scrap materials, particle emissions and obsolete technology
(for example, copper cables) scrap.