`Argon oxygen decarbonization (AOD) process development`

Closing case of the lecture. MIT doctoral student Krivsky, working under John Chipman in the Building 8 basement, doing basic carbon-monoxide-reaction research. Discovered low oxygen potential of argon would pull carbon and oxygen out of molten steel. Not patented at MIT; Krivsky commercialized it at a company. Now used for virtually all stainless steel and most nickel superalloys worldwide. Tom estimates ~$1B/year value to the world steel industry. The case Tom uses to illustrate "MIT lost the patent" lessons elsewhere in the corpus.

The process is called argon-oxygen decarbonization. It's now the process by which every bit of stainless steel and most nickel-based superalloys in the world are made. It was developed right down here in the basement of Building 8 by a guy named Krivsky, who was doing his doctoral thesis under John Chipman. They were doing basic research, bubbling argon through molten steel and looking at the carbon monoxide reaction — carbon and oxygen in the steel — finding out what would happen. They found if you bubbled argon rather than air, you would have a low enough oxygen potential in argon — the oxygen potential is very low — you would basically pull carbon and oxygen out. It used to cost a small fortune to make 304L stainless. Nowadays with AOD steelmaking, you get low carbon without any difficulty, such that we hardly ever make 304 stainless anymore.