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pig iron
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Encyclopedic overview
Pig iron used to manufacture ductile iron
Pig iron is an intermediate good used by the iron industry in the production of steel. It is developed by smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a high carbon content, typically 3.8–4.7%, along with silica and other dross, which makes it brittle and not useful directly as a material except for limited applications.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “pig iron” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.