Smelters

I was reading a book about railroads in the Black Hills of S.D. Way back when, 100+ years ago, gold was extracted(?) at a smelter. A train would bring in cars to a particular smelter in this proportion: 1 lime, 2 coal, 1 coke, and 3 ore. Based on how many gazillion tons of ore it must take to get much gold, smelters must have been big business for railroads at one time.

Do smelter still provide a lot of railroad traffic, or are they something that has gone by the wayside? I can’t picture anyone wanting to live downwind from one.

A blast furnace is a form of smelter. Virtually any place that converts ore to finished metal will qualify.

Obviously the former steel belts are pretty much history, but there are still those who are doing the job. That’s where you need to look.

Here is a link to the Quincy Mining smelter history and its ruins, as they exist today. This is in Hancock, MI and smelted copper. They used cupola furnaces (blast furnace) and reverberatory furnaces. The complex of ruins will be saved and developed as a museum and historical preservation.

http://quincysmelter.wordpress.com/

I think smelters are pretty much only a relic from the past. None left around here that I can think of. I expect that most of the ones that are left are for the non-ferrous ores and metals out west - copper, lead, gold, silver, zinc, uranium, etc. - plus nickel and maybe a few others up in Canada.

One such metal is aluminum, but I believe almost all of the heat to smelt it comes to the plants by electric power - think Bonneville Power Authority and the like along the Columbia River - so no carloads of coal or coke for that, and even the outbound ingots would be pretty ‘light’. To some extent, electricity-by-wire may have replaced coal for most of the others as well - and so those ores could be refined close to the mine, hence not much need for rail transport for it, either.

  • Paul North.

You’re asking a very large question about a very large and diverse business – kind of like asking, “Can you explain how the railroad business works and what it does, in 100 words or less?” But anyway, here’s my best effort at today’s smelting practices which are very different than practices 50 years ago, not to mention 120 years ago.

Copper: Copper comes in two primary ores, sulfide and oxide. Sulfide ores are usually refined to metallic copper by (1) concentrating using flotation to generate a wet, finely ground concentrate of about 40-60% copper by weight; (2) smelting the concentrate in reverberatory furnaces using natural gas fuel to obtain copper metal with trace metals mixed in, (3) electrolytically refining to obtain pure copper and separate out the trace metals which are usually recovered separately because they contain valuable elements such as gold and silver. Sulfuric acid is a major byproduct of the copper sulfide or smelting process, and molybdenum a major byproduct of the concentration process at many ore bodies. Oxide ores are usually refined by leaching in dilute sulfuric acid, and the resulting leachate is electrolitically refined. Most copper ore bodies mined today contain both sulfide and oxide ores and thus both processes are use

Murphy S.: The above explanations of smelters and how they function are very complete, and certainly interesting in their detail.

I would offer another resource, Library of Congress is apparently utilizing Flickr to post from its collections.

This link is to some photos of the part of East Tennessee, near Ducktown (I think in Polk County) shown is the devestation from years of smeltering activity utilizing Sulphuric Acid. The Fumes from that operation over years denuded a wide circle of land around the smelter at Copper Hill, Tn.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179057520/

Here is a link to the History of the smeltering activities at Copper Hill:

http://www.neon-john.net/RV/Trips/Copper_Hill/Copper_Hill_Home.htm

another link to some area pictures: http://www.gamineral.org/ducktown-museum-pics.htm

I know it is getting slightly far afield, but I thought it might prove a counterpoint to the excelent information posted by some of the others.

The Copper Hill plant did at the time of operations have a rail connection, I think that it may have been originally L&NRR , but I am not positive of that. I believe that trackage (to Copper Hill) is annuled, and is actually connected to the Blue Ridge Senic Railroad(www.brsenic.com ) trackage which connects with the G

Minor note – sulfuric acid is a byproduct of smelting copper ores, not a component of the smelting process. The smelting process releases sulfur dioxide gas (SO2) from copper sulfide ores of various types. In the atmospheric environment, SO2 combines with gaseous H2O to form H2SO4 – sulfuric acid. The sulfuric acid droplets precipitate onto the ground, vegetation, water bodies, etc., reducing the pH and poisoning life forms.

As to quantity and locations, here’s a list of some major byproduct sulfuric acid producers from the ore smelting activity, as of 2003:

Sulfuric Acid (smelter)

PRODUCER CAPACITY*

Sam, you have the right county–Polk.

The original line from Knoxville to Marietta, Ga., went through Ducktown and Copper Hill. The SPV atlas (2004) shows that this was been abandoned by CSXT south of Etowah. It shows what must have been industrial track north of Copper Hill to Tennessee Copper, with no dot indicating a precise location for Tennessee Copper. The Marietta and North Georgia seems to have been the original line, going up to Knoxville from Marietta. After 1893, it bacame a part of the L&N.

Johnny

In Attica IN. There is a steel mill called Harrison Steel. NS serves this plant with scrap metal. I know if the wind blows just right it REALLY stinks.

I think the Red Dog concentrate is (was?) off loaded in the Vancouver (BC) area, from where BNSF hauls it through Spokane up to the Kettle Falls International Railroad, which takes it into British Columbia to this site, near Teck’s Trail smelter.

http://wikimapia.org/#lat=49.0384869&lon=-117.606926&z=15&l=0&m=b

http://www.teck.com/Generic.aspx?PAGE=Operations+Pages%2FZinc+Smelters+%26+Refineries+Pages%2FTrail&portalName=tc

I think you’re correct, Dale – it’s been so long since I had any involvement in that traffic that I can no longer remember which port it enters.

Hey - I recognize that place ! (Ducktown area)

Devastation is indeed the correct word. We drove past/ through it on U.S. 64 West in August 1969, after visiting the Graham County RR and its Shay at Topton or Robbinsville (can’t remember which), on our way from Asheville, NC to Chattanooga, TN for a long weekend. Although, one of the comments below the 1st linked photo and conversations with other relatives down that way do indicate that Mother Nature has started to reclaim a lot of that terrain, with at least ‘pioneer’ vegetation. I believe Johnny Degges is from down that way and time frame, and has a background and a lot of experience with inorganic chemistry - let’s see if he can add anything to this.

  • Paul North.

Nucor Steel has this facility near Plymouth, Utah. Would it be correct to call such places which use scrap metal ‘smelters’?

http://wikimapia.org/#lat=41.884004&lon=-112.1964169&z=15&l=0&m=b

Not really. Smelting is the act of producing a metal from its ore. A minimill such as Plymouth-Nucor is melting scrap steel, not ore, then continuous-casting billets, and rolling it into merchant bar.

RWM

Thanks, Paul.

I wish that I could add something to the discussion on this part, but I feel totally unqualified. Let’s say that I know of the area and the devastation. I have driven once each way on US 64 (in 1963 and again in 1968), and I have been through on US 411 three times (1/1/62 was the last), but I do not remember noticing anything becasue I was intent on the driving.

Johnny

I was a smelter once, along with my uncle. We had our nets, and a spot on the shore, but the run kind of fizzled.

Too bad–I like smelt!

We now submit to handcuffing for hijacking the thread, and return you to your regular discussion (which I can’t assist with).

Dear Carl;

I’m not sure but I think one of us is confused! [%-)] [:-^]

And to Railwayman,

You’re certainly cirrect. The uniqueness that was the Copper Hill area, was from the fact that it did produce noxious emisions as a product of the chemical process, and coupled with the rainfall; what could have been described as some of the first_"Acid Rain_" destruction. That rainfall, due to the prevailing wind pattern, created an almost perfectly circular pattern of plantlife devestation, with the smelter at its center, as I recall the circle was about 5 miles in diameter.

Some years back, I flew over the area, from our aircraft it looked like a red circle of death, unlike the surrounding ground which was heavily vegetated (rich,green).The contrast was striking from 25,000 feet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smelts

Pretty big up in the UP of Michigan. A lot of copper and iron were mined up there as well, transported by rail.

We now return to the regularly scheduled thread.

What has been reported to be the first environmental protection law passed in the U.S. stemmed to smelter emissions in the Utah Valley south of Salt Lake City in 1900-01. The farmers in the vicinity of the smelter were angry about smelter emissions poisoning their orchards and truck farms. The outcome was a state law that prohibited smelters from emitting sulfur dioxide fumes that damaged farmlands. Several smelters relocated to areas without adjacent farms, and others began recovering their SO2 fumes.

I would guess that Tennessee never had such a law. Today, federal law generally governs and prohibits such actions.

RWM

Here in the wild, wild west of Arizona, the copper mines and smelters had their own short line railroads to haul ore from pit to smelter. The larger railroads, primarily the Southern Pacific, only had connections to set out or pick up loads for the short lines.