Hot Slag
At the ThyssenKrupp steel mill in Bruckhausen is a fantastic image of molten slag being poured out of a slag car.
Slag is a by-product of the manufacturing of steel; an alloy produced by smelting pig iron at temperatures of 1650 °C.
The slag is poured into pits, where it is left to cool down before being recycled as aggregate for cement or concrete.
Just because it’s Friday, today’s phonetically-related random fact is that one of the other meanings of the word “slag” (used in the UK to describe a person “of loose morals”) is apparently considered the 16th most offensive word in the English language1, just above “shit”.
Wikipedia has more info on Steel manufacturing, but if you’re in a much more Friday-orientated frame of mind, then you could amuse yourself with Wikipedia’s extensive information on Profanity in all its forms!
Thanks: Felippo
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By “English” I mean what Americans call “British English”. ↩
Wow there is all sorts of cool industrial sightings around here. Smokestacks, rail cars, pipelines, adn everything is dirty as hell too.
too bad they didn’t capture this process on a rainy day (or when there’s snow around!)….you can hear the ‘BOOM’ from a long way away!
I’ve has a few “Hot Slags” in my time, its nothing to be proud of, but good fun from time to time!
Plenty of awesome photos about metalworks and cokeplants at http://www.stahlseite.de/
I think if you examine the bottom of here, below the numerous gas flares in Port Talbot and the nearby Baglan Bay oil refinery, they’re actually pouring into the hot mill, ready to roll.
neat!