BOS Vessel

The photograph was made in 2016 inside the basic oxygen steelmaking shop at Port Kembla Steelworks. A converter vessel is in full pour: molten steel falls in a burning column, and sparks fan outward across the hood above the vessel mouth. The floor is stained the deep, particular orange that accumulates over decades of heat and iron oxide. Gantries and structural steel members rise from the pour and disappear into darkness well before the ceiling. The scale of the space dwarfs the pour itself, and the pour is enormous. Basic oxygen steelmaking was introduced at Port Kembla in 1972, the same year No. 5 blast furnace was blown in. The BOS vessels were rated at 200 to 250 tonnes and they worked alongside the existing open hearth furnaces, which had operated at the steelworks since the first heat was tapped on 8 November 1931. The shift from open hearth to basic oxygen steelmaking was methodical: as each new BOS vessel came online, the older furnaces were decommissioned. When the third converter was installed in 1982, the last open hearth at Port Kembla closed. A steelmaking technology that had served the site for fifty years was gone inside a decade. The BOS process is fast, loud, and visually extreme. Oxygen is lanced into molten iron at high velocity; carbon burns off in minutes and the vessel tips to pour refined steel. The converter hood catches what escapes. The photograph records the moment the vessel is at full tilt, the pour at its most violent and most complete. The orange floor underneath is not rust. It is the record of every previous pour: iron oxide and scale ground into the concrete over years of identical moments. Port Kembla Steelworks has operated continuously since No. 1 blast furnace was blown in on 29 August 1928. Basic oxygen steelmaking remains the primary steelmaking route at the plant. The vessels in this shop are still working.