No, the Bessemer process is no longer used to make steel anywhere in the world. The last commercial Bessemer converter in the UK was decommissioned in 1974, and the process had already fallen out of widespread use decades before that. What replaced it, though, is closely related, and the core idea behind Bessemer’s invention lives on in modern steelmaking.
Why the Bessemer Process Was Abandoned
The Bessemer process worked by blowing air through molten iron to burn off impurities, especially carbon. It was revolutionary when Henry Bessemer introduced it in the 1850s because it made steel production dramatically faster and cheaper. But it had a fundamental flaw: the air being blown through the molten metal was about 78% nitrogen, and some of that nitrogen dissolved into the steel. Nitrogen-contaminated steel becomes brittle, which made Bessemer steel unsuitable for many structural applications where reliability mattered.
The process also struggled with phosphorus. Most European iron ore contained significant phosphorus, and the original Bessemer converter couldn’t remove it. A modified version with a different lining (the Thomas process) partially solved this, but the broader quality problems remained. The open-hearth process, developed in the 1860s, offered better control over the chemistry of the final product and eventually overtook Bessemer as the dominant method by the early 20th century.
What Replaced It
The open-hearth process dominated steelmaking for several decades but was itself replaced starting in the 1950s by the basic oxygen process, sometimes called basic oxygen steelmaking or BOS. This method is essentially a refined descendant of Bessemer’s original idea. Instead of blowing regular air through molten iron, it blows pure oxygen. That single change eliminates the nitrogen problem entirely while keeping the speed advantage that made Bessemer’s concept so powerful in the first place.
Today, steel production worldwide is split between two main methods. In the United States, about 72% of raw steel comes from electric arc furnaces, which melt scrap steel using electrical energy. The remaining 28% comes from basic oxygen furnaces, which start with molten iron from a blast furnace. Globally, basic oxygen furnaces still account for a larger share of production because countries like China and India produce enormous volumes of steel from raw iron ore rather than recycled scrap.
How Modern Steelmaking Compares
A basic oxygen furnace operates on the same principle Bessemer patented: blow a gas through molten iron to oxidize and remove carbon and other impurities. The key differences are the use of pure oxygen instead of air, more sophisticated temperature and chemistry monitoring, and the ability to precisely control the composition of the finished steel. A modern converter can process a batch of steel in about 20 minutes, which is comparable to the speed Bessemer achieved, but with far more consistent quality.
Electric arc furnaces take a completely different approach. They use powerful electric currents to melt solid steel scrap, bypassing the need for molten iron entirely. This method is more energy-efficient when scrap is available and produces lower carbon emissions per ton of steel. The shift toward electric arc furnaces has accelerated in recent decades, particularly in the US and Europe, driven by both economics and environmental pressure. Neither method resembles the dramatic, sparking spectacle of a Bessemer converter in action.
Where You Can Still See One
Several museums preserve Bessemer converters as historical artifacts. The Science Museum in London displays an original pilot Bessemer converter from 1865 in its Making the Modern World gallery. Sheffield Museums holds the last working converter from the UK, which operated at a British Steel Corporation plant in Workington until 1974. A few other industrial heritage sites around the world keep converters on display, though none are operational for actual steel production.
The Bessemer process ran commercially for roughly 120 years, from the 1850s through the 1970s. Its core innovation, using blown gas to rapidly refine molten iron, turned out to be one of the most consequential ideas in industrial history. The process itself is gone, but steelmakers still use its underlying principle every time a basic oxygen furnace fires up.