Not gonna lie, I love learning about this kinda stuff.

https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/the-blast-furnace-800-years-of-technology

"Modern steel is produced by two different methods. The first uses an electric arc furnace to melt recycled steel scrap. The second method is to make new steel out of iron ore. While new steel can also be made in an electric arc furnace via the direct reduction route, most new steel starts life in a #blast #furnace. Iron ore (largely iron oxide), coke (coal that has been heated to drive out impurities), and limestone get placed in the furnace, where the coke reacts with the iron and air to form a high carbon iron known as “pig iron” (so named because historically the iron flowing down a trench into a series of casting molds resembled a pigs suckling from a mother sow). That pig iron then goes through a refining process (today a basic oxygen furnace, historically other methods such as open hearth furnaces or Bessemer converters) which reduces the carbon content and turns it into steel."