The Future Development of the Iron and Steel Industry in South Africa (ca88ca3b-829d-473d-ac6d-cf056a75fa75)

Dr. K. Gebhard In his excellent and comprehensive survey on the future development of the Iron and Steel Industry in South Africa, Mr. Coetzee has also mentioned the direct reduction processes as a possible method of converting iron ore to iron. Mr. Coetzee has made it quite clear that at this stage one should not consider these processes as a 'magic formula' which herald a 'break through'. I agree entirely with this point of view. Once upon a time I held the opposite view, but in the meantime I have revised my views. To do so, I had 40 years at my disposal. In 1930 I had the privilege of being connected with the first commercial sponge iron plant in Germany1 - a plant which was capable of producing 40 tons of sponge iron a day. We were determined to prove that the blast furnace would become obsolete in the near future. We considered it as an unnecessary detour to convert iron ore first into an iron-carbon alloy, which contained further quite a number of undesirable elements, and to remove this carbon by an endothermic process. Direct iron-making seemed to be a logical short cut. Unfortunately, we were not able to establish this 'short cut,', but the life of our sponge iron plant was cut short. We had solved all technical but not the economic problems. Basically the positon is still the same today - mainly economic and to a lesser degree technological aspects determine the rate at which sponge iron plants are installed. More has been said and written than done about direct reduction plants. I think that there are two main reasons for this stagnation in the introduction of direct reduction processes. The first reason is that modern blast furnaces are just too good and too economic ever to be replaced by direct reduction processes on a large scale. This, of course, already limits the field of application for direct reduction plants. The second reason is that sponge iron production and utilisation is based on technical considerations, which increase not only the production cost of sponge iron but also the conversion cost to steel to such an extent that under special conditions only are direct reduction plants an economic proposition. Are these technical considerations still as forceful and valid today as they were when 'direct steelmaking' was first contemplated? The development of sponge iron production as a method of direct