I remember we talked about making steel, you guys said that to make steel, we need to remove the impureties and the excess carbon from the iron, I agree with you, but I think that the iron ingot should be pure iron, so this is my suggestion :
Keep the blast furnace like it is, but also add a charcoal dust slot.
But here is the change :
If you want to make steel, you have now 2 choices, the first one use crushed iron (from macerating iron ore), if you put it in the blast furnace, it will only use the air cells (use 5 air cells per steel) and because it has to much carbon, it will give you 1 steel per crushed ore and 2 slag.
The second choice is to use 1 iron ingot and 1 charcoal dust (by macerating charcoal), it will use one air cell, one charcoal dust and one iron ingot, giving you at the end 1 steel and one slag, because one charcoal dust is still too much carbon for making steel.
So that's my idea,