Pure iron is extremely soft, shiny and silvery. Its composition consists only of trace amounts of carbon – 0.008%.
Pure iron wire is an abundant metal and its composition is 6.2% in the Earth’s crust. In fact, in the list of metals according to abundance, it ranks second. It rusts easily in the presence of moist air and very high temperatures.
As aforementioned, pure iron is extremely soft. It is even softer than aluminum. However, smelting is not an ideal process to obtain pure iron. This is because smelting renders it harder and stronger due to carbon content.
If the carbon content goes above 0.2, then pure iron gets converted to steel. In comparison to pure iron, steel is about 5000 time harder.
Ferrite is the scientific name of pure iron. It begins to melt at a temperature of 1530° C. At 768° C, magnetism is lost and 909° C, crystalline property is reversed. When it is cooled, all these reactions take place in the opposite direction. Alpha, beta and gamma ferrite are the three different forms of pure iron.
One must remember that pure iron is not the same as wrought iron. Pure iron, steel and wrought iron are different metals and have their own properties. They must not be confused as one another. Their compositions differ by quite a large margin and make a difference in their properties. Wrought iron is mostly called pure iron but be sure not to get confused.
99.5% pure iron is electric pure iron. The carbon content, the phosphorous content and the sulfur content are very low. Electric pure iron has many desirable properties that make it ideal and a better choice in the making of different materials. These properties are high strength, high permeability, high saturation magnetic induction and high magnetic stability.
Pure iron is thus ideally used to as a main material in the preparation of electromagnetic valves, aviation instrumentation, electromagnetic shielding, electronic tubes, etc. Soft iron, as pure iron is commonly called may also be used in magnetic assemblies, electromagnets and electric motors.
The magnetic field created by pure iron is very strong plus, it doesn’t saturate quickly and this is why it is used to make magnetic cores.
Even when the magnetic field is removed, soft iron can retain the magnetic property. Hard iron on the other cannot. This is why soft iron is preferred.
Electric conductivity however comes in the way of its applications. It is not used for AC conductors because energy is wasted and the metal heats up.
