ABSTRACT
Steelmaking, since the days of Sir Henry Bessemer, has been revolutionized by many innovations (i.e., energy ef cient giant blast furnaces, enormous turnover rates of oxygen steelmaking furnaces, continuous casting, etc.). These together with stateof-the-art process control have contributed not only to the increased production* but also to the improved quality of steel enormously. Breakthroughs have been possible owing to advances in our knowledge and better understanding of the chemical, physical, and thermal interactions among steel, slag, gas, and refractory phases during re ning as well as transfer operations. These, as shown in Figure 1.1, follow from a solid understanding of the fundamentals of the manufacturing process and increasing reliance on models and measurements that constitute the “knowledge-based foundation” of steelmaking [1,2].
