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This paper considers two novel free boundary problems that emerge from modelling processes basic to steel manufacture.The first process concerns the spray cooling of hot steel sheet during the process of continuous casting. Here, an important practical consideration is the non-monotonicity of the measured heat transfer from the steel as a function of the steel temperature. In order to understand this phenomenon, a two-phase flow model is written down for the heating and vapourisation of the water spray. This model relies on a microscale analysis of droplet vapourisation and, in a steady state, it reduces to a coupled system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations for the spray temperature and water content. This system predicts the conditions for the existence or otherwise of a free boundary separating the two-phase region from a dry vapour layer close to the steel plate.The thickness of this vapour layer is determined by the solution of a generalised Stefan problem. The second process concerns the macroscopic modelling of pig iron production in blast furnaces. In the simplest scenario, the blast furnace may be roughly divided into a porous solid region. overlaying a hot high pressure gaseous zone. The gas reacts with the solid in a thin “intermediate region” at the base of the solid region and it is in this intermediate region that the pig iron is produced. A free boundary model is proposed for the location of the intermediate region and its stability is investigated.