Open-hearth furnace

Open hearth furnaces are one of a number of kinds of furnace where excess carbon and other impurities are burnt out of pig iron to produce steel. Since steel is difficult to manufacture due to its high melting point, normal fuels and furnaces were insufficient and the open hearth furnace was developed to overcome this difficulty. Compared to Bessemer steel, which it displaced, its main advantages were that it did not expose the steel to excessive nitrogen (which would cause the steel to become brittle), was easier to control, and it permitted the melting and refining of large amounts of scrap iron and steel.

Open hearth furnace was first developed by German-born engineer Carl Wilhelm Siemens. In 1865, the French engineer Pierre-Émile Martin took out a license from Siemens and first applied his regenerative furnace for making steel. Their process was known as the Siemens-Martin process, and the furnace as an "open-hearth" furnace. Most open hearth furnaces were closed by the early 1990s, not least because of their slow operation, being replaced by the basic oxygen furnace or electric arc furnace.

While arguably the first primitive open hearth furnace was the Catalan forge, invented in Spain in the 8th century, it is usual to confine the term to certain 19th-century and later steelmaking processes, thus excluding bloomeries (including the Catalan forge), finery forges, and puddling furnaces from its application.

The open hearth process is a batch process and a batch is called a "heat". The furnace is first inspected for possible damage. Once it is ready or repaired, it is charged with light scrap, such as sheet metal, shredded vehicles or waste metal. The furnace is heated using burning gas. Once it has melted, heavy scrap, such as building, construction or steel milling scrap is added, together with pig iron from blast furnaces. Once all the steel has melted, slag forming agents, such as limestone, are added. The oxygen in iron oxide and other impurities decarburize the pig iron by burning excess carbon away, forming steel. To increase the oxygen contents of the heat, iron ore can be added to the heat.

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