ORIGIN OF BASIC SLAG
Sixty years ago there was no basic slag. An engineering friend tells me that the first successful charge of the new basic slag method of making steel was made 60 years ago. The process was invented by S. G. Thomas and P. C. Gilchrist to get rid of the phosphate in pig iron which made the metal liable to crack when converted into steel by the existing Bessemer process. Lime was used to absorb the phosphate, and the resultant slag was cut out of the converters and left lying about in huge dumps, for at first there seemed to be no use at all for it. It was not till someone thought of grinding the slag into a fine powder that basic slag became popular as a fertiliser; now, of course, slag is almost as valuable as the steel. Otir Continental friends still call it by its original name. "Thomas's Cinder” or "Thomas's Meal.”—“Blythe” in “British Farmer and Stock-breeder.”
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THD19390603.2.84.11
Bibliographic details
Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21362, 3 June 1939, Page 15
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163ORIGIN OF BASIC SLAG Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21362, 3 June 1939, Page 15
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