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The complete rebuild of No. 3 blast furnace at USS/Kobe Steel Co.,
Lorain, OH, plus efficient operation of its No. 4 BF, meant that the company had more than
enough hot metal to feed its steelmaking furnaces. During its 100th anniversary year
(see 33MP, 4/95, p. 27), the company ordered a pig casting machine from Economy Industrial
Corp so it could process the excess hot metal into pig iron.
The $3.5 million machine, installed over two-and-a-half
months, began operating on February 19, and now casts iron pigs at a rate of 150 tph.
"Since our company is iron rich, this will allow us to
run our blast furnaces at their maximum potential and utilize this product in the
marketplace," states USS/Kobe president Ralph E Fifield.
The new pig caster allows continued optimum blast furnace
production, even when downstream demand for hot metal is below blast furnace capacity, or
is reduced because of BOF outages or caster size changes.
Incorporating the latest advances in auto- mation and control systems. the
new machine uses Economy's patented process-design technology to
improve mold life, reduce maintenance, and increase metal yield.
The machine is the second new pig casting machine installed in
the U.S. in the past two years, according to T.R.Allen, Jr., president, Economy
Industrial. The first, a 100-tph Economy Industrial machine was installed at
Mansbach Metal Co. in 1994, and services AK Steel's Ashland Works. |
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USS/Kobe is marketing the pig iron exclusively through
ProTrade Steel Co. Ltd., Hudson, OH. "We plan to penetrate the foundry, steel shops,
and mini-mill markets by producing high-silicon basic pig iron," says Fifield.
Economy Industrial is no newcomer to the trade, having also supplied the pig
casting machine or the HISmelt HRDF project in Kwinana, Australia, and a number of
machines for ferroalloy, stainless, and either applications in the U.S., the Caribbean,
South America, and Europe.
According to Allen, interest in pig casting as a means of
maintaining level BF production rites, and thus decreasing operating and maintenance cost,
has grown in the past several years. Beside the expected cost savings, the increased
spread between hot metal cost and pig iron prices now makes the sale of merchant pig iron
much more profitable. Using pig casting machines also eliminates the particulate
emissions caused by beaching or grounding iron.
Allen believes that both domestic and overseas demand for pig
iron should remain strong, as electric furnace operators seek scrap substitutes. EAF
steelmaking is expected to increase the demand for low residual scrap units over the next
five years. Pig iron, with its controlled chemistry and ease of handling, offers EAF
melt shops an ideal means of diluting lower quality scrap.
© 1996
Penton Publishing
33 Metalproducing Magazine
June, 1997 p.76 |
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