Steel production

[abelyanhayk852]

A big steel mill uses 375t of coal and 200t of iron to receive 43t of steel. But in real life, 1t of steel requires 1.5t of iron and 0.8t of coal. Is this a mistake or game feature?

[ryantheskinny]

Probably just used some production numbers given for whichever plant the model is based on.

[MG83]

Originally posted by abelyanhayk852:

A big steel mill uses 375t of coal and 200t of iron to receive 43t of steel. But in real life, 1t of steel requires 1.5t of iron and 0.8t of coal. Is this a mistake or game feature?

i assume you are talking by technology of 2010s ? but at old times heat efficiency was not as high as your numbers. also i assume the quality of coal/ore production was not as refine as today :>

[MG83]

do you have any historic data of soviet steel production ?

[abelyanhayk852]

Originally posted by MG83:

i assume you are talking by technology of 2010s ? but at old times heat efficiency was not as high as your numbers. also i assume the quality of coal/ore production was not as refine as today :>

Of course, but this would require a little more coal, but not 9-10x amount. And what about iron? It dissapears by 80% during production.

[MG83]

Originally posted by abelyanhayk852:

Originally posted by MG83:

i assume you are talking by technology of 2010s ? but at old times heat efficiency was not as high as your numbers. also i assume the quality of coal/ore production was not as refine as today :>

Of course, but this would require a little more coal, but not 9-10x amount. And what about iron? It dissapears by 80% during production.

well when you consider % 95 pure iron ore only dissipation and crude waste will be around % 5-10 by weight. but if its % 65 purity ? then the crude will be far greater. i do not have the data from a soviet steel mill but i assume they did not achive greated than % 80 purification both in steel and coal at 1960 but not sure either.

"Little more" depends on how good you insulate the oven and how efficient your production method is . But if you have any historical data to compare yes that would require to change.

For example i am electrical engineer i made some calculations about RBMK reactor fuel consumption and its power production and the power production of current nuclear plant in game seemed very little very inefficient compared to real stats of real working nuclear plants of that era. If you have similiar data info please make some historical calculation / estimation and share :D

[lucamotives]

This is what i like about this game ! There are people here that know to think and just not to accept ! Also yes ... back then it was less efficient but not as much .

[MachaQueso]

This ratio has been bothering me for a while and I hope the dev takes a look.

I just took some time researching and it seems the most likely process for steelmaking in the 60's is through blast furnaces which consume 1.6 tons of iron and .8 tons of coal per 1T of steel produced which matches OP.

Based on this, the steel mill could be rebalanced to consume 34 tons of coal and 69 tons of iron per 43 tons of steel produced. Maybe we can mod this.

[abelyanhayk852]

Yes, I edited the still mill script file, because it was very unfair.

[Invicator]

The masses of coal consumed feels greatly disproportionate to the the ammounts of steel produced. 375t is so much that docking trains can't unload the coal fast enough. Autobuy won't hold up either. If anything, I think conveyors do still the trick, but that's it already I believe. With trains that unpracital, it always bothered me a little why a building such as this has 3 rail connections.

[michal.uvira]

i read 2,4 t of iron 1,4t of coke (you must karbonized coal for coke ) +700-800 kilograms of slag-forming additives .
minimum iron ore for real use need 22% on iron

[Onbird]

Indeed. No matter how you account for losses and waste, there is no plausible way that only 20% of iron would make it into the steel and the rest be lost somehow on the way.

Unless the resource "iron" actually rather represents something like iron-containing minerals, which is rock which contains some amount of iron oxides. Except that it can't be, as that would be what the game calls "iron ore", which is processed to "iron" in a process that removes a bit more than half its weight.

A consequence of the lopsided conversion from iron to steel is that the price of steel will necessarily be as high as it is, causing it to account for the overwhelming majority of the material costs of construction. Diminishing the significance of the rest of the construction material industry.

From the top of my head, I would instead suggest that the current resource named "iron" would be renamed "iron oxide", and the output of the iron ore processing plant be reduced to only about a third or so of input mass. Then steel mills could have input-output ratios like those suggested in this thread. To keep construction as expensive as before, brick, prefab, board and cement factories would have reduced throughput so those resources would become de facto more expensive to produce. Market prices would be changed accordingly.

[WASP]

It is the wording issue. "Iron ore" should be called "Low grade iron ore", "Iron" should be called "High grade iron ore". Indeed, in-game "Iron" looks like a pile of ore and not like chunks of metal. And nobody smelts iron, steel is smelted directly from the ore.

[abelyanhayk852]

Maybe the iron should be understood as "metal", because the steel is used in different types of construction, even in wires, where copper is necessary.

[Onbird]

Originally posted by WASP:

It is the wording issue. "Iron ore" should be called "Low grade iron ore", "Iron" should be called "High grade iron ore". Indeed, in-game "Iron" looks like a pile of ore and not like chunks of metal. And nobody smelts iron, steel is smelted directly from the ore.

That's why I suggested that it should be called "Iron Oxide", since most naturally occurring iron is in oxide form.

That would justify a significant mass loss from "Iron" to steel, though nowhere as large as the one currently in the game.

[Novu]

@ abelyanhayk852

The coal is being used to fire the furnaces that melt the iron and was NOT just used as "Coke." There is a Mod in the workshop that uses Electric induction furnaces instead of coal fired furnaces. But instead of using coal it really ramps up the electric consumption. This is a fair tradeoff.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2341597400&searchtext=