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IRON AND STEEL

Overview

PROCESSES

• Agglomeration
  
• Coking
  
• Blast Furnace
  
• Direct Reduction
• Basic Oxygen Furnace
• Electric Arc Furnace
• Heat Treating
• Ladle Metallurgy
• Continuous Casting
• Ingot Casting
• Ladle Preheating
• Secondary Finishing
• Surface Coating
  
  

ALUMINUM

Overview

PROCESSES

• Mining/Primary Processing
  
• Recycle/Scrap Melting
  
• Aluminum Casting
  
• Aluminum Smelting
  
• Anode Baking
  
• Bauxite Mining
  
• Bauxite Refining
  
• Extrusion
  
• Forging
  
• Heat Treating
  
• Molten Handling
  
• Rolling

Courtesy of American Iron and Steel Institute.

Basic Steel Mill Products Canadian Iron and Steel Industry Employment and Productivity Energy Consumption Environmental Issues Industry Modernization and Restructuring Integrated Mill Business Structure International Competition Labor Issues Market Drivers

Minimill Business Structure Price Trends Products and Markets Regulations and NOx Control Rolling Mills / Secondary Finishing Sales Revenue and Profitability Shipments by Major Markets Shipments by Type of Market Shipments by Type of Product U.S. Share of World Output U.S. Steel Shipments

Steel mills produce a variety of products. The basic starting (semifinished) shapes are slabs, billets, and blooms. Formerly made from ingots, these semifinished shapes are now mostly continuous cast. Slabs are used to produce flat products such as plate, sheet and strip, and skelp, much of which is coated in tin mills, galvanizing mills, or other coating processes. Flat products, once the exclusive domain of integrated mills, are now being cast produced by minimills with thin-slab casting technology. Billets are rolled to form bar, rod, wire, seamless pipe, and small structural shapes. Also called long products or commodity products, these are now the exclusive domain of the minimill. Large structural shapes for heavy construction or rails are rolled from blooms. Increasingly large and complex minimills have recently taken the majority of this market away from the integrated mills.

Slab Products

Billet Products

Bloom Products

Steel Processing Flow Lines, American Iron and Steel Institute, Washington, D.C.