Basic Oxygen Steelmaking

Basic oxygen steelmaking is a primary steelmaking process that converts molten pig iron into steel by blowing pure oxygen through it inside a converter lined with alkaline, or basic, refractory material, which is why the process is called basic; a modern converter can process up to 400 tons of steel in under 40 minutes, versus ten to twelve hours for the older open-hearth process it displaced. The Swiss engineer Robert Durrer developed and refined the process, producing the first steel from his experimental 2.5-ton converter at Roll AG in Switzerland on April 3, 1948. The Austrian steelmakers VOEST and OAMG commercialized Durrer's technology, adapting it into the Linz-Donawitz process by June 1949 and bringing the first industrial converters into operation at Linz in November 1952 and at Donawitz in May 1953; by the year 2000, basic oxygen furnaces produced roughly 60 percent of the world's steel.