41 6 THE SCIENTIFIC PAPERS OF 



In the discussion of the Paper 



"OX THE DEPHOSPHORISATION OF IRON" AND 

 STEEL," by M. A. POURCEL, Terrenoire, France, 



DR. SIEMENS* said he wished he had had an opportunity of 

 reading M. Pourcel's paper previous to the meeting, because there 

 were so many points of interest attaching to it, and involving 

 chemical complexities, that it was almost impossible to discuss 

 such a paper without having previously perused it. He would, 

 therefore, confine himself to one or two matters only, in which 

 M. Pourcel made reference to processes and experiments he 

 (Dr. Siemens) had carried out. He was disposed to agree with 

 Mr. Snelus in his criticisms of the three principal factors upon 

 which M. Pourcel said the elimination of phosphorus depended, 

 these factors being liquid basic cinder, high temperature, and, if 

 he understood right, the absence of oxygen. He was disposed to 

 think, however, that the presence of oxygen was an advantage in 

 the elimination of phosphorus, for it stood to reason that as the 

 phosphorus was removed by oxidation, oxygen could not interfere 

 with the process. He further could not agree with the author 

 when he said, that by the ore-reducing process only rail metal was 

 producible, and that in order to obtain very mild metal the scrap 

 process had to be resorted to. It was, indeed, quite the contrary ; 

 for in order to make a very mild metal, such as was now generally 

 used in naval construction, the ore process was almost exclusively 

 used, and scrap was only added for two objects, the one being to 

 get rid of the cuttings and other scrap produced in the mills, and 

 the other to quicken the output. In working with ore and pig 

 only, the time taken up was naturally greater than in adding at 

 once a proportion of perhaps 20 or 30 per cent, of scrap metal, which 

 would bring down the carbon of the bath by one-third to begin 

 with ; and there was this further advantage in. it, that in dealing 

 with a silicious pig a very considerable amount of slag was pro- 

 duced in using ore and pig only, which was diminished relatively 



* Excerpt Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, 1879, pp. 367-370. 



