Hi Kevin,

As John says, iron can be recycled and used again. The small amount of swarf I produce in my workshop ends up in the skip of a nearby Milling, Turning and Welding shop and is recycled to rebar or nails etc.

Thor

Most steel is made by blending a mixture of scrap and iron from a blast furnace. I empty my workshop scrap bin into the metal skip at my local recycling cente.

Rod

Does it matter if you mix up ferrous and aluminium?

At work and at the local recycling centre there are separate bins for ferrous and non ferrous scrap. There is a huge different in even the scrap value. You are unlikely to recover the cost of the petrol taking steel to a scrap merchant, but other materials can certainly raise enough money for a good night out. Don't think aluminium is very high but lead and copper certainly are.

Peter

There is scrap steel and then there is scrap steel.

Much scrap steel is rubbish, old cars and such like, and contained metals, such as copper and zinc, that are “poisons”. Then there is good scrap such as ships hulls. Then there is very good valuable steel scrap of known providence. Such scrap usually comes from within steel works or rolling mills etc.

When steel is made from blast furnace iron in a converter an awful lot of heat is produced. It is usual to stop the process half way and add scrap steel, good or rubbish, to cool everything down.

The really good scrap is kept for making high quality alloy steel in furnaces like an electric arc furnace. The higher the quality of steel, the higher quality of steel scrap required. This is known the rising scrap system.

The metal that is really desirable to recycle is copper. I believe the mining of 1950s and 60s rubbish tip for copper is seriously being considered.

JA

Edited By JA on 15/07/2020 17:55:14

I spoke to a metallurgist friend of mine (used to work in a steel works) about recycling iron railings. He reckons the 'unsuitable for making new steel' story is a porky put about by government to cover up incompetence. As long as you can get it molten any non metallic impurities float off with the slag. Things like copper, lead and tin which get mixed in with scrap do cause problems., but there wouldn't be an awful lot of those in pre 1940 railings

Copper and lead pipe from old plumbing brings in the ££

Plus we have two leisure batteries and two big car batteries waiting for the recycler to reopen. A door knocker offered £12 just for the leisure batteries.

There are companies who offer to take them off your hands for free!

Neil

For many years, Wellworthy at Lymington used old railway chairs as the raw material for centrifugally cast cylinder liners. Quite an interesting process to watch!

Howard

In the 1970s the price of ordinary steel scrap dropped below the cost of producing raw, blast furnace, iron. Quite a number of mini-steel works were set up world wide that used cheap scrap in an electric arc furnace. The resulting steel was rolled to produce concrete re-enforcing bar. One was next to the railway station at Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey. I suspect it has gone long ago.

JA

If it wasn't, China and India would be in deep ****.

Regards Ian.

During WWII the GWR had wide spread 'salvage' drives. Salvage being the collection of materials for recycling and not just metal by the way – paper, rags,oil,grease, bones amongst other commodities were sought. A special request was made for used razor blades to be handed in, thousands were collected and £8 was raised, this was then donated to a comforts fund.

My point being that razor blade manufacturers would be willing to pay a premium for these old blades as their provenance as scrap would be known and trusted.

Also in former times some larger engineering companies would collect scrap files for resale back to manufacturers. Both these instances are probably examples by which modern day recycling conscience enterprises could benefit.