Steelmaking: Blast Furnace

Smelting of ores into native metals is an old technology. In a blast furnace an oxygen-poor material (carbon, typically) is introduced into an ore under white hot conditions where the carbon grabs the oxygen leaving purer native metals leaving slag behind.

In this video we get an initial animation of the blast furnace itself. Then we get footage of the native metal and a discussion of the next steps for the carbon-rich iron that is produced.