1.

INTRODUCTION

Iron (Fe) is one of the most abundant rock-forming elements, constituting about 5% of the Earth's crust. It is the fourth most abundant element after oxygen, silicon and aluminium, and after aluminium, the most abundant and widely distributed metal. Iron is indispensable to modern civilisation and people have been skilled in its use for more than 3,000 years. However, its use only became widespread in the 14th century, when smelting furnaces (the forerunner of blast furnaces) began to replace forges. Iron ores are rocks from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. These rocks are usually found in the form of hematite (Fe2O3) or magnetite (Fe3O4). About 98% of world iron ore production is used to make iron in the form of steel.

1.1

Types of iron and steel 1.1.1 Cast iron

The molten iron from the bottom of the furnace can be used as cast iron. Cast iron is very runny when it is molten and does not shrink much when it solidifies. It is therefore ideal for making castings - hence its name. However, it is very impure, containing about 4% of carbon. This carbon makes it very hard, but also very brittle. If hit it hard, it tends to shatter rather than bend or dent. Cast iron is used for things like manhole covers, guttering and drainpipes; cylinder blocks in car engines, Agatype cookers, and very expensive and very heavy cookware.

1.1.2

Wrought iron

If all the carbon is removed from the iron to give high purity iron, it is known as wrought iron. Wrought iron is quite soft and easily worked and has little structural strength. It was once used to make decorative gates and railings, but these days mild steel is normally used instead.

1.1.3

Mild steel

Mild steel is a type of iron that containing up to about 0.25% of carbon. The presence of the carbon makes the steel stronger and harder than pure iron. The higher the percentage of carbon, the harder the steel becomes. Mild steel is used for lots of things such as nails, wire, car bodies, shipbuilding, girders and bridges amongst others.

1.1.4

High carbon steel

High carbon steel contains up to about 1.5% of carbon. The presence of the extra carbon makes it very hard, but it also makes it more brittle. High carbon steel is used for cutting tools and masonry nails (nails designed to be driven into concrete blocks or brickwork without bending). Have to be careful with high carbon steel because it tends to fracture rather than bend if mistreat it.

2.0

THE PROCESSES OF MAKING CUTLERY

2.1

Blanking

Production begins with rectangular, flat blanks of stainless steel, sterling silver, or in the case of plated flatware, an alloy. Large rolls are stamped in individual blanks, which are flat pieces, roughly the same shape as the piece to be produced.

2.2

Rolling

Through a series of rolling operations, these blanks are graded or rolled to the correct thickness and shapes required by the manufacturer's flatware patterns. First the blanks are rolled crosswise from left to right, right to left, and lengthwise, then trimmed to outline. Each spoon, for instance, must be thick at the base of the handle to resist bending. This gives graded pieces the right balance and a good feel in the hand. Each piece is now in the form of a cleanly finished shape in the rough dimension of the utensil.

2.3

Annealing

Between operations, the blanks must pass through annealing ovens to soften the metal for further machine operations. The annealing, done under great heat, must be very accurately controlled so the final piece will be resistant to bending and to nicks and dents when in use. The last annealing is the most important, because the pieces must be just the right degree of hardness when they are embossed. Then the metal can be forced easily into all the tiny details in the dies and the ornamentation will be faithfully reproduced.

2.4

Cutting to outline

An operator, to remove the excess metal and to fashion the shape of the piece, places the rolled blanks in the cutout press. This process is similar to cutting shapes from rolled dough. The shape of the piece is cut out of the metal and the excess metal is re-melted and transformed back into sheets of metal to be used again. This trimming must ensure an accurate fit of the pieces into the dies when the design is applied.

2.5

Forming the pattern

The next step is the forming of the pattern. Each pattern has its own hardened steel diestwo dies for each piece, one with the pattern for the front of the piece, and the other with the pattern for the back of the piece. These are carefully set in the hammers by die setters. The operator quickly places a piece in place under the drop hammer, which descends with a hydraulic pressure of 200 tons. (The bases of the drop hammers are bedded in 160 cubic yards of cement.) The metal is squeezed into every tiny detail of the ornamentation in the die, embossing the pattern on the piece. The blow of the hammer hardens the piece for use in the home. Surplus metal around the outline of the piece is then removed by clipping presses.

2.6

Finishing

Special steps are necessary for the creation of knives, spoons, forks, and hollowware pieces. To make the hollow handle for the knife, after two strips of metal are formed to shape, they are then soldered together, buffed and polished until the seam is no longer visible. The blade and handle are permanently joined by means of powerful cement, which bonds with great strength and durability. With the spoon, after the pattern has been embossed upon the front and back of the handle, the next step is the forming of the bowl. The forming is done again under the same powerful drop hammers from accurate steel dies. Each bowl requires two hammer blows. Surplus metal around the outline of the spoon is removed by clipping presses. A small burr still remains to be removed at a later operation. The forming of fork tines is a similar process to that of the forming of the spoon's bowl, but the operation takes place before the pattern is applied to the handle. After a fork is cut to outline, it is pierced and tined: the tines are pieced out, and the small piece of metal that holds the

tip of the tines together is removed in another operation after the pattern has been applied. 2.7 Silver plating

For the silver-plated pieces, the electroplating process is an additional step. The pieces are first prepared by being buffed so that the edges are smooth and the surfaces are free from small holes. When the buffing is completed, the pieces are given a thorough cleaning with as many as 12 different chemical solutions. Finally, they undergo electrolysis, in which a layer of silver is electrically deposited over the base metal.

2.8

Buffing and sand polishing

The knives, forks and spoons are now buffed, and then polished. Depending on the pattern, special finishing processes can give silver-plated and sterling silver pieces a bright, mirror-like finish, a soft, satiny glow, or a brushed or Florentine finish.

3.0

THE EXTRACTION OF IRON 3.1 The Blast furnace

Iron is extracted from iron ore in a huge container called a blast furnace. Iron ores such as haematite contain iron oxide. The oxygen must be removed from the iron oxide to leave the iron behind. Reactions in which oxygen is removed are called reduction reactions. Carbon is more reactive than iron, so it can push out or displace the iron from iron oxide. Here are the equations for the reaction: Iron oxide + carbon 2Fe2O3 + 3C iron + carbon dioxide 4Fe + 3CO2

In this reaction, the iron oxide is reduced to iron, and the carbon is oxidized to carbon dioxide. In the blast furnace, it is so hot that carbon monoxide can be used to reduce the iron oxide in place of carbon: Iron oxide + carbon monoxide Fe2O3 + 3CO iron + carbon dioxide

2Fe + 3CO2

3.2

The role of limestone in the extraction of iron

The original ore contains acidic mineral impurities such as silica (SiO2, silicon dioxide). These react with the calcium carbonate (limestone) to form a molten slag, the main ingredient being calcium silicate. There are two ways to show the formation of the waste slag, which is mainly calcium silicate.

Calcium carbonate + silica ==> calcium silicate + carbon dioxide CaCO3 + SiO2 ==> CaSiO3 + CO2 Reaction above is a sort of displacement reaction example of the less volatile high melting or boiling silicon dioxide (silica) displaces the more volatile gaseous carbon dioxide. However, this is sometimes can be shown in two stages:

CaCO3 ==> CaO + CO2 The thermal decomposition of calcium carbonate into calcium oxide and carbon dioxide, and the reaction needs a high temperature of over 900oC, but that was not a problem in the blast furnace.

CaO + SiO2 ==> CaSiO3 The combination of the basic calcium oxide and the acidic silicon dioxide to form calcium silicate.

The molten slag forms a layer above the more dense molten iron and they can be both separately, and regularly, drained away. The iron is cooled and cast into pig iron ingots or transferred directly to a steel-producing furnace. The waste gases and dust from the blast furnace must be appropriately treated to avoid polluting the environment. The highly toxic carbon monoxide can actually be burnt to provide a source of heat energy, and in the exothermic reaction it is converted into relatively harmless carbon dioxide.

Carbon monoxide + oxygen ==> carbon dioxide 2CO + O2 ==> 2CO2 2CO(g) + O2 (g) ==> 2CO2(g)

Acidic gases like sulphur dioxide from sulphide ores, can be removed by bubbling through an alkali solution such as calcium hydroxide solution ('limewater') where it is neutralised and oxidised to harmless calcium sulphate. Cleaning a gas in this way is called 'gas scrubbing'. Any contaminated water must be purged of harmful chemicals before being released into a river or recycled via water treatment plant. The waste slag is used for road construction or filling in quarries which can then be landscaped. Iron from a blast furnace is ok for very hard cast iron objects but is too brittle for many applications due to too high a carbon content from the coke.

4.0

TRANSFORMATION TO STEEL Most metals in everyday use are alloys. Iron is a good conductor of heat and

can be bent or hammered into shape (malleable), quite strong physically that made stronger when alloyed with other materials. This makes iron useful as structural material and for making things that must allow heat to pass through easily and useful construction materials. Steel is an alloy because it is a mixture of a metal (iron) with other elements. Iron from the blast furnace contains about 96% iron with 4% of impurities including carbon, silica and phosphorus. In this state the cast iron is too hard and too brittle for most purposes. Cast iron is hard and can be used directly for some purposes such as manhole covers, ornamental railings because of its strength in compression and is very hard wearing. However, if all the impurities are removed, the resulting very pure iron is too soft for any useful purpose.

Therefore, strong useful steel is made by controlling the amount of carbon and selected metals to produce an alloy mixture with the right physical properties fit for a particular application like a steel for car bodies, chrome stainless steel, extremely hard and tough tungsteniron steel alloys. The real importance of alloys is that they can be designed to have properties for specific uses in terms of compression/tensile strength or corrosion reduction like less susceptible to rusting. Lowcarbon steels (0.1% carbon) are easily shaped for car bodies Highcarbon steels (1.5% carbon, often with other metals too) are hardwearing and inflexible and can be used for cutting tools, bridge construction.

Stainless steels have chromium (and maybe nickel) added and are much resistant to corrosion (from oxygen/water) than iron or plain steel, which readily rust.

Objects made of iron or plain steel, particularly those exposed to the weather, regularly has to be painted or coated with some other protective layer from the effects of water and oxygen. Adding small quantities of other metals or carbon to make steel, one of the useful metal alloys in widespread use today can alter the properties of iron. Steels are alloys since they are mixtures of iron with other metals or with nonmetals like carbon or silicon.

Molten iron from the blast furnace is mixed with recycled scrap iron. Then pure oxygen is passed into the mixture and the nonmetal impurities such as silicon or phosphorus are then converted into acidic oxides: Si + O2 ==> SiO2, or 4P + 5O2 ==> P4O10 Calcium carbonate (a base) is then added to remove the acidic oxide impurities (in an acidbase reaction). The salts produced by this reaction form a slag, which can be tapped off separately. CaCO3 + SiO2 ==> CaSiO3 + CO2 (calcium silicate slag) Calculated quantities of carbon and/or other metallic elements such as titanium, manganese or chromium are then added to make a wide range of steels with particular properties. Because of the high temperatures the mixture is stirred by bubbling in unreactive argon gas.

5.0

WASTES FROM THE IRON INDUSTRY 5.1 Milling Dust Control Materials

Most mills use a wet milling operation and employ water to control dust from crushing and grinding. Slurried value-bearing process water from dust control contains both suspended and dissolved solids. The solid content of the slurry varies with each operation, ranging between 30 and 60 percent. The dust control slurry is typically pumped to a ball mill overflow / hydrocyclone feed sump for further beneficiation.

5.2

Mine Water

Because mine water that is discharged or otherwise released to the

environment can be a source of contamination. Mine water consists of water that collects in mine workings, both surface and underground, as a result of inflow from rain or surface water, and ground water seepage. Mine water may be used and recycled to the beneficiation circuit, pumped to tailings impoundments for storage prior to recycling or for disposal, or discharged to surface water. During the life of the mine, water is pumped to keep the mine dry and allow access to the ore body. This water may be pumped from sumps within the mine pit or from interceptor wells.

5.3

Flotation Wastes and Materials

Discharge from a typical floatation cell system is made up of 25 to 50 percent solids, mostly gangue material and small quantities of unrecovered iron minerals. The liquid component of flotation waste is usually water, along with any remaining reagents not consumed in the flotation process. Most operations send these wastes to tailings impoundments where solids settle out of the suspension. The liquid component may then be used in other mining activities as needed or discharged if water quality criteria are met. The characteristics of tailings from the flotation process vary, depending on the ore, reagents, and processes used.

6.0

ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS Since wastes and other materials at active mines are managed on land, there is

a potential for environmental contamination from various parts of the mining operation. Mine pits and underground workings, overburden and waste rock piles, ore piles, and tailings impoundments in the iron ore mining industry are of particular note, since these are the areas in which toxic contaminants are most commonly found. The extent and magnitude of contamination depends on highly variable site-specific factors that require a flexible approach to mitigation.

6.1

Damage cases 6.1.1 Reserve Mining Company; Silver Bay, Minnesota

In 1971, EPA conducted a study of taconite tailings disposal into Lake Superior by the Reserve Mining Company operation in Silver Bay, Minnesota. The report notes that 67,000 tons of taconite tailings slurried with 500 million gallons of water were discharged into Lake Superior per day during plant operations. Particle

sizes in the tailings ranged from 3/8 inch to less than one micron. Coarse particles contained in the slurry settled on the bottom of the lake as sediment; fines particles either settled out or were dispersed because of temperature differences between the wastewater and thermoclines in the lake. When dispersion occurred, water currents acted to keep the particles in suspension and transport them over a wider area of the lake. Several environmental impacts have been associated with tailings discharge (U.S. EPA 1971) were algal growth in the lake was stimulated because of nutrient increases, growth of iron-fixing bacteria in the lake increased and the populations of benthic fauna (such as shrimp) decreased by as much as 50 percent. 6.1.2 Dunka Site: Babbitt, Minnesota

The Dunka Site, owned by LTV Steel Mining Company, is a full-scale openpit taconite operation near Babbitt, Minnesota. Piles of waste rock, generated during open-pit taconite mining, are stored onsite. These piles exceed 50 million tons, cover 320 acres, and contain metal sulfide minerals. The mine waste rock may be, therefore, more analogous to a copper-nickel mine, rather than an iron ore mine. An extensive remediation process is under way at the Dunka site, which includes an experimental wetland treatment system, plus testing of two, more technically advanced systems, one of which has been selected for permanent installation. Further, closure notice has been given for this property according to the American Iron Ore Association. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) found that more than 95 percent of all leachate samples taken from the mine site between 1976 and 1980 had pH values between 6.0 and 8.5, but values as low as 4.5 were reported.

6.1.3

Iron River District: Iron County, Michigan

Acid drainage in the Iron River District is caused by the presence of sulfurbearing black slate associated with the Riverton Iron Formation. The sulfur is in the form of fine-grained pyrite that rapidly oxidizes to form sulfuric acid when combined with water. Sulfuric acid leaching mobilizes other minerals present in the host rock, such as iron, calcium, magnesium, manganese, and aluminum. Upon entering the Iron River, the acid drainage is rapidly neutralized and precipitates "yellow-boy," a finely divided yellow-brown iron hydroxide. The yellow-boy clouds the river water and covers any objects in the river or sediment. Sampling conducted by the Michigan Geological Survey Division between 1975 and 1977 identified two sources of acid

mine drainage in the area: the abandoned Dober and Buck Mines. At the Dober Mine, highly acidic ground water seepages fill the abandoned pit and drain into the Iron River. Between 50 and 100 gallons of contaminated water were reported to enter the river per minute. In 1975, the mine drainage contained the following contaminants: pH: 4.1; iron: 1,125 mg/l; manganese: 121 mg/l; sulfate: 5,130 mg/l; lead: 0.05 mg/l; and cadmium: 0.02 mg/l. Acid drainage from the Buck Mine results from waste rock piles located along the Iron River. The waste rock piles cover about 19 acres and contain pyrite-bearing rock and approximately 10.2 million pounds of sulfur. The sulfur has the potential to generate as much as 31.1 million pounds of sulfuric acid.

7.0

PREVENTION / REDUCTION EFFORT

7.1

Using recycled materials

Mining exacts a severe and sometimes irreversible toll on public health, water and air quality, fish and wildlife habitat, and community interests. If we hope to decrease our reliance on this activity while meeting our current and future metal needs, we must look at getting more of our raw materials from secondary sources-the only other terrestrial supply currently available. In large part, the failure to use recycled materials can be attributed to the distortionary subsidies for virgin minerals extraction, which make it cheaper to dig up new minerals than to reuse aboveground stocks. Recycling has a number of advantages. For example, it takes far less energy to recycle discarded materials than to extract, process, and refine metals from ore. It takes 95% less energy to produce aluminum from recycled materials rather than from bauxite ore. Recycling copper takes seven times less energy than processing ore; recycled steel uses three-and-a-half times less.

7.2

Reducing the consumption of minerals

Mining produces materials used in manufacturing all kinds of products, from consumer goods to fertilizers to energy supplies. During the 20th Century, per capita resource consumption rose fourfold. Today, the production of goods and services requires, on average, over eighty tons of natural resources annually per person, including materials from mining. By 2050, consumption of natural resources is expected to rise by an additional factor of three. One way to limit the impact of

mining on the environment is to consume less, so that fewer minerals are needed to build products like cars, appliances, electronics, etc. This can be accomplished through more efficient resource use, but also by simply using less and recycling more. 8.0 REFERENCE

Michigan State, Geological Survey Division. 1978 (April). Study of Mine Subsidence and Acid Water Drainage in the Iron River Valley, Iron County, Michigan (by Dr. A. Johnson and G. Frantti). Prepared for the State of Michigan by the Michigan Technological University.

Minnesota State, Department of Natural Resources, Division of Minerals. 1984. Bob Bay Study by J.A. Strudell, K.A. Lapakko, A.P. Eger). St. Paul, Minnesota.

Minnesota State, Department of Natural Resources, Division of Minerals. 1981. Heavy Metals Study: 1980 Progress Report on the Field Leaching and Reclamation Program (by A.P. Eger, K.A. Lapakko, A. Weir). St. Paul, Minnesota.

Minnesota State, Department of Natural Resources, Division of Minerals. 1981. Transport of Trace Metals and Other Chemical Components in Mining Runoff through a Shallow Bay by K.A. Lapakko and A.P. Eger). St. Paul, Minnesota.

U.S. Department of the Interior, Geological Survey. 1988. Assessment of Water Quality of Non-Coal Mining Areas of Missouri (by B.J. Smith). Water Resources Investigation Report No. 87-4286. Washington, DC.

Weiss, N.L., (editor). 1985. SME Mineral Processing Handbook, Volumes 1 and 2. Society of Mining Engineers of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc. New York, New York.