Steel Industry Expanded (siex)

Steel Industry Expanded adds hot blast ironmaking and a Bessemer converter. It takes the iron that Iron Industry Expanded makes and turns it into steel in bulk: a furnace that melts iron instead of merely reducing it, the cowper stoves and the chimney that make its blast hot, a converter that blows molten pig iron down to steel, and the high-pressure steam plant that drives all of it. Some of what ships is creative-only: it has no recipe in survival.

The chain runs in one direction. The hot blast furnace is the same machine as the iron tier's cold furnace with a sealed top and two exhaust outlets, and those outlets are what make hot blast possible: the stoves store the furnace's own waste heat and give it back to the air going in, which is the only way the furnace reaches iron's melting point. Molten pig iron from its tap feeds The Bessemer process, where air blown through the bath burns the carbon out of it in about five minutes, and the result is Bessemer steel if the blow is stopped at the right moment and soft iron if it is not. Rolled pipes are the pipe tier that goes with all this, strong enough for high-pressure steam.

Getting started is the order to build in, from the iron tier's molten pig to a finished heat of steel.

Contents

The mechanics, in the order they are built

1. Ironmaking in the hot blast furnace - the charge, the air the burden demands, the melt and the two taps.
2. Hot blast - the stoves and the stack that work the furnace's exhaust, and the blower that pushes the air.
3. The Bessemer process - the blow that takes molten pig iron down to steel, and when to stop it.
4. Bessemer steel - the metal that comes out of the vessel, its tools, and how they compare with vanilla steel.
5. Rolled pipes - the high-pressure pipe tier and the welded joint that meets none of the lower ones.

The structures, each with its figure, its materials and its build steps

• Hot blast furnace - nine courses of tier 3 refractory brick over a two-cell hearth.
• Cowper stove - the regenerator that makes the blast hot, worked in pairs.
• Smoke stack - the chimney that takes the exhaust the stoves do not.
• Bessemer converter - the control, the transmission, the gas intake and the vessel they spawn.

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