Pig iron is raw iron, the immediate product of smelting iron ore with coke and limestone in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a very high carbon content, typically 4-5%, which makes it very brittle and not very useful directly as a material.

Pig iron is typically poured directly out of the bottom of the blast furnace into pots to form ingots. The ingots are then used to produce wrought iron or steel, typically with a Bessemer converter or basic oxygen furnace, by burning off the excess carbon in a controlled fashion.

The traditional shape of the molds used for these ingots was a branching structure, formed in sand, with many individual ingots at right angles to a central channel or runner, bearing some similarity in appearance to a litter of piglets suckling on a sow. When the metal had cooled and hardened, the smaller ingots (the pigs) were simply broken from the much thinner runner (the sow), hence the name pig iron. As pig iron is intended for remelting, the uneven size of the ingots and inclusion of a little sand was unimportant compared to the ease of casting and of handling. Modern steel mills, equipped as they are with large cranes, either cast large single ingots or transfer the molten iron to a ladle for immediate use as molten metal.

Cast iron is made by remelting pig iron, often along with substantial quantities of scrap iron, and taking various steps to remove undesirable contaminants and adjust the carbon content.

The Chinese were making pig iron by the later Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC). In Europe, the process did not become common until the 14th century.

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Seasons Greetings!

You are a part of my random click tour

Cheers for the

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I tagged you in my journal dear ... you must now make a journal with 20 facts about yourself ... I did it - I scare myself sometimes.

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YOU'VE BEEN HUGGED!

Spread the DA love around man!

*dingding* RULES:
1- You can, and should, hug the person who hugged you!
2- You can't hug the person more than once
3- You MUST hug atleast 6 other people
4- You should hug them in public! Paste it on their user page! C'mon...don't be scared of public displays of affection! (remember, public displays of affection mean less chance of lawsuits)
5- Random hugs are perfectly okay! (and pretty swell if you ask me)
6- You should most definitly get started hugging right away! Six hugs a day are equal to a full upper body work out - hug twelve people, and that's an entire body.

P.S. Hey! Try some random people to spread more of the DA love around - because as we know, randomness = community spirit ... and we all love community spirit (the community frowns down upon those who don't).

Have a nice day

NB: New, improved YOU'VE BEEN HUGGED: Now with grammar.

I'm awfully sad - I lost my phone somewhere in the all encompassing but beauteous snow. So if you need me you'll have to find an alternative method of reaching me ... snow signals maybe

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BOO!
( I couldn't find a ghost, so I settled for the scariest picture I could find )
I thought you my miss me, so I decided to come and say hello ( and scare you too, just so you wouldn't forget me for a while ... you wouldn't forget the girl who gave you a heart attack would you? No )
So yes, hello Dear Have whimsical weekend!

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