Evil looking metal device

Slag hauler? Armco used something similar to haul molten slag from the steel mill to their slag dump, where it was dumped into a deep pit. It formed roughly 1/2" diameter pieces as it fell and cooled. The slag was then used for roadbed material. They had less than a half hour from the time the thing was filled till they were dumped to keep it from hardening in the car. They also had some slag haulers that ran on huge sets of tires and were driven directly across the highway, instead of the loop the train tracks needed.

We in Ohio had plenty of our own coke oven pollution and would not have noticed any drifting in from anywhere.

Occasionally they would get something wrong at the ovens and release gases that took paint off houses. It made the paper and there was compensation, but nothing changed - steel was the only game in town and it called the shots.

Bob

That's what I was thinking. Upon a quick googling, we nailed it.

-- Woe be to him that reads but one book. -- George Herbert

...and the cribbing is likely on a flatbed RR car.

-- Woe be to him that reads but one book. -- George Herbert

Yes it is. There is now the weight of the once-molten iron PLUS the weight of the rail car. Also, is the mouth of the smelter big enough to swallow such a thing?

And I would expect a large quantity of refractory lining capable of withstanding molten iron or steel, that might not go down well in the furnace.

Rich Grise on Tue, 10 May 2011 17:27:59

-0700 typed >> On May 10, 1:39 pm, Spehro Pefhany

Problem I can see is that what is in it is "iron" but the tank car is steel - which is "contaminated iron". But maybe that can be dealt with in the re smelt.

I dunno.

Other way around. Pig iron has _more_ carbon (around 4%) than steel (0.2-2%) and is very brittle. The carbon gets burned off by blowing oxygen through the molten metal in the process of making steel. Adding steel to the mix of pig iron is no problem (that's where you'd add scrap steel anyway). The refractory stuff lining the vessel might not be as welcome, though you'd think it would just float to the top, if you could find a furnace big enough to take hundreds of tons of stuff in that form factor.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

"The Journey is the reward"

Well that's what I'm wondering - are the furnaces really big enough that you could just drop a whole rail car in? If not, how would you go about cutting the car up into more manageable bites? I suppose you could maybe cut away the rail car's skin, bust up the refractory lining and then be left with the lump of solidified cargo. But is the furnace mouth big enough to swallow that?

Well that's what I'm wondering - are the furnaces really big enough that you could just drop a whole rail car in? If not, how would you go about cutting the car up into more manageable bites? I suppose you could maybe cut away the rail car's skin, bust up the refractory lining and then be left with the lump of solidified cargo. But is the furnace mouth big enough to swallow that?

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If the iron freezes in a transfer ladle because of a power loss or whatever, there are service companies that will melt out the iron with big oxy/fuel lances. To my surprise, I see that the same service is available for frozen torpedo cars:

When Firefox saw the "/print" in the first URL, it thought I wanted to print and brought up the "print" window. I had to try it twice to see what in the world was going on. Very strange action.

Paul

I got the same thing. But I get a lot of strange actions.

I wouldn't discount the possibility that it's a ball mill for a specific use.

Harold

Pardon the ignorance but why not just build the furnaces next to each other?

-- Boris

In big integrated mills, they do exactly that. Then the iron is transferred by means of a transfer ladle.

But apparently, based on the quotes from authoritative references we've seen in this thread, the majority of such operations still use a torpedo car, which suggests somewhat more distance between the blast furnace and the BOF.

Here's a video from Bethlehem Steel:-

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

That page has javascript in it that requests printing. Disable javascript in your browser and it won't try to print on load. Of course that will make navigating lots of other websites a bit difficult...

If you click the Print button on this page it will take you to the other (shrug):

That must have been written by an HTML coder of about...ummm....my ability. d8-)

Because it was cheaper to ship pig iron a couple hundred miles, than the limestone and coal or coke.