AK Steel's Latest Claim

Here is a short course in steelmaking:

First, metallurgical grade coal is heated (in an oven by INDIRECT heat--it is sort of “roasted” and NOT set afire) in order to drive off a lot of volatile chemicals and other “icky” stuff. Then, the coke is added to a big load of iron ore (this ore is an ORE and NOT pure iron) along with dribs and drabs of this and that. This mixture is “blasted” with extremely hot air in a BLAST FURNACE (the large, tall, black, two liter bottle-shaped thing with the doo-hickey on top that you might see from Oxford State Road just southeast of the big red BOF-continuous caster building), and this results in molten IRON (with a layer of “sl*g“ floating on top)!

The molten iron is “tapped off” into “torpedo” railroad cars and shipped a hundred yards or so to the Basic Oxygen Furnaces (BOFs) where it is transferred into another large vessel which usually (but not always) contains some scrap steel (which has been pre-graded). Dribs and drabs of some magic additives are thrown in, then a large, long pipe (called an oxygen lance) is lowered into the vessel and pure oxygen is blown into the mixture at a high volume and pressure. A miracle occurs! The large furnace vessel is tilted, the sl*g is skimmed off, and the molten STEEL is poured into a ladle.

The ladle of molten steel is transferred to the casting aisle where it is dumped into the top of a large device which molds it into a slab (anywhere from 4” to 10” +- thick, 4’ to 8’ wide, and in a CONTINUOUS strand. The strand is cut, by automatic cutting torches, into whatever length is required. The steel slab is then ready for rolling into bars, plate or strip, and/or whatever further processing is required for any particular application. (Similar continuous casters cast billets--more square than rectangular in cross section than slabs-- to be rolled into structural shapes, or “thin slabs” that eliminate the need for parts of the “rolling” process.)

To answer your more basic question “What does AK produce at it current Coke Ovens?”:

At their existing coke plants (as well as most existing coke plants in the USA) the main product is COKE. However, there are several useful (and some not so useful) by-products including: ammonia, benzene, some nitrates useful as fertilizers, tars, and others. However, at the proposed new SunCoke facility, these volatile by-products will not be recovered, but will instead be incinerated by high heat as part of the process. The waste heat will be recovered to generate electricity for use by AK.

For more detailed and accurate description of the steelmaking processes, I recommend “The Making, Shaping, and Treating of Steel”. I would think it is available at our local library. Also, I know that there are (or at least there were in the past) several copies in the AK engineering department. If you know someone there, perhaps you could borrow a copy.)

I hope that this helps.