ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,281,365, issued on April 22, was assigned to Kobe Steel Ltd. (Kobe, Japan).
"Method for producing molten steel" was invented by Koji Tokuda (Kobe, Japan) and Tsuyoshi Mimura (Kobe, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method includes, in a first furnace, melting 40% to 95% by mass of a solid-state direct reduced iron, and separating a molten pig iron having a carbon content of 2.0% to 5.0% by mass and a temperature of 1350 to 1550deg C. and a slag having a basicity of 1.0 to 1.4. In a second furnace, a remainder of the solid-state direct reduced iron is melted together with the molten pig iron separated in the first furnace to form a mo...