Let's look at how modern steel industry has been developed.
Integrated steel works as the main steel facility to produce mass production of steel.
Integrated steel work has all the functions of primary steel production such as raw material
preparation, iron making, and steel making and casting and rolling with other major process.
Integrated mills are large facility that are typically only economical to build in two
to three million ton per year annual capacity and up.
Final product made by integrated plant are usually large structural sections, heavy plate,
strip, wire rod, railway rails, and occasionally long product such as bars and pipe.
Integrated mills may also adopt some of the process used in mini mills such as arc furnaces
and direct casting to reduce production cost.
If we divide their entire steel production process into ironmaking, steelmaking, continuous
casting, rolling, and the final finishing.
As you know most of pig iron are produced by blast furnaces.
There are hot metals produced by air, which is supplied to BOF, sometimes EAF.
The scrap is only supplied to electric furnaces together with some DRI.
This shows aerial view of representative integrated steel works.
Some works employ some state-of-the-art facility, for example dome facility is utilized to
safely store high-grade iron ore and coking coal - and additionally this facility is used
to prevent dust generations.
Mini steel works are also popular compared with the blast furnace-based steal plant.
Mini steel works normally use the electric arc furnace to produce steel from returned
steel, scrap, and direct reduced iron.
Since the process uses scrap metal instead of molten iron, coke-making and iron making
operations are eliminated.
The processing of steel can include continuous casting, hot rolling, and forming, and cold
rolling, wire drawing coating, and pickling.