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This is a list of countries by iron ore production based on U.S. Geological Survey data. [a] List. Rank Country Usable iron ore production (× 1000 tonnes) Year
Iron ore was the third-highest-value metal mined in the United States, after gold and copper. [2] Iron ore was mined from nine active mines and three reclamation operations in Michigan, Minnesota, and Utah. Most of the iron ore was mined in northern Minnesota's Mesabi Range. Net exports (exports minus imports) were 3.9 million tons.
The company had made steel in Scranton, Pennsylvania since 1840, but moved to provide easier access to iron ore, and in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid labor troubles. Birmingham, Alabama became a major steel producer in the late 1800s, using locally mined coal and iron ore. The iron ore was mined from the Red Mountain Formation of Silurian age.
Iron ore, coke, and flux are fed into the blast furnace and heated. The coke reduces the iron oxide in the ore to metallic iron, and the molten mass separates into slag and iron. Some of the iron from the blast furnace is cooled, and marketed as pig iron; the rest flows into basic oxygen furnaces, where it is converted into steel.
Elemental iron is virtually absent on the Earth's surface except as iron-nickel alloys from meteorites and very rare forms of deep mantle xenoliths.Although iron is the fourth most abundant element in Earth's crust, composing about 5% by weight, [4] the vast majority is bound in silicate or, more rarely, carbonate minerals, and smelting pure iron from these minerals would require a prohibitive ...
In this piece, we will take a look at the 12 biggest iron ore producers and mines in the world. For more companies and mines, head on over to 5 Biggest Iron Ore Producers and Mines in the World.
Steel is an alloy composed of between 0.2 and 2.0 percent carbon, with the balance being iron. From prehistory through the creation of the blast furnace, iron was produced from iron ore as wrought iron, 99.82–100 percent Fe, and the process of making steel involved adding carbon to iron, usually in a serendipitous manner, in the forge, or via the cementation process.
But on the Mesabi and Cuyuna Ranges, iron mining operations evolved into enormous open pit mines, where steamshovels and other industrial machines could remove massive amounts of ore. "Large-scale commercial production of magnetite taconite ore on the Mesabi Range started in 1956 at the Peter Mitchell Mine near Babbitt, Minnesota." [2]