Hello all,
I am still debating about what season to set my 4x8 steel mill in, and I want to know if winter would be a possibility. Do the mills normally shut down for the winter, or do they continue to make steel? Also, how long would it take molten steel/iron/slag to cool in the transport vehicle to an unusable temperature during winter? How about with steel slabs?
Thanks,
sfb
Steel mills operated all year round, dependant on economic conditions more than environmental ones. Proof. Remember if you have an old fashion mill, to make your snow drifts around the mill greyish.
Molten Carbon Steel (general steel) approx 2869°F.
Warm summer day ~ 70°F; Cold WInter day ~ 20°F = Temperature delta = 50°F
50/2869 x 100% = 1.74% difference relative to molten steel temperature - I’d say it doesn’t make a real difference.
What do you mean by old fashion?
Before the extensive use of pollution controls to capture soot, sulfuric acide, mercury and the like - snow often had a bit of a greyish cast from that pollution (or so I have read - I wasn’t around back then) - for example, check this World War II poster of Uncle Sam surrounded by industry and railroads - back then all that smoke and soot pouring out of the chimneys was considered something to be proud of (which, in-so-much as it meant American industry producing enough military equipment and supplies to defeat the Axis, it was).
Mark Twain, no less, comments in his history/travelog “Life on the Mississippi” (~ 1883) about the smog/smoke in St. Louis, and how it seemed to be much less than previous (if true, I’d hate to see St. Louis back in 1850) and mentions how you couldn’t persuade anything to look new as it’d get coated with soot the minute you took your hand off of it (yeah, a bit of an exaggeration, but still).
Now, imagine a steel mill of, say, the 1920s - blasting soot and other pollutants into the sky in the very definition of the word belching - all those fine soot particules are going to land somewhere, and in snowy weather, well you get the idea.
By the 1970s, a lot of the former Verticaly Integrated Steel Mills were beginning to close in the US, replaced by Electric Arc furnances and, of course, imports - prior to major EPA regulations.
I wonder what the grounds of a Chinese Steel Mill looks like in, say wintery Manchuria.
At the end of the second war to end all wars my dad was working in ( area). When gas rationing was lifted he moved our family from to . When we got to in the I will always remember looking out the windshield and asking dad, “What is that brown cloud?” “They call it smog” he replied. Have fun, Rob
Steelmaking goes on year round, regardless of the weather. Even if the smokestacks have been cleaned up, it’s still an industry that creates a lot of dirt. Handling coal and ore puts a lot of dust in the air, as does pushing coke ovens. When a blast furnace “slips”, it creates a lot of smoke and dust that’s released out the top of the furnace. Drop a 20 or 30 ton slab on ground that’s been pulverised to powder and the wind-borne dust will be everywhere. Snow, where it survives, will be grey, brown, red, or black.
Wayne
Do you have any good pictures?
Nothing applicable to modelling a steel mill in winter - cameras were not allowed inside the plant. [swg] …however, even the few pictures I did manage to take in winter are only detail views of a blast furnace which I was attempting to model. My usual focus was on locos.
This shot, while not taken in the winter, shows pretty much what would be the colour of snow in this area after a couple of days:
Wayne
Also around the furnace areas(in general where there is a lot of heat) the doors can still be open for ventilation. So the snow tends to melt around those areas and it results in puddles of water. Other support buildings still get blown snow up beside them.
In the mills I have worked/visited during the winter the snow has been white with specs of grey/dark–blown from the ground or off of dirty cars, etc–usually. This goes back to the early 90s after a lot of clean up had occurred.
Richard
30 yrs working in steel mills, not basic steel, and always in the melt shop. We didnot shutdown. The bigest problems were working on the furnace then going out in the cold. The first plant I worked at, we made alloy and most of the scrap was outside. We had to make sure that the second charge was completly dry. The other plants I worked in we made steel castings, another cast iron rolls and the other stanless steel slabs and the scrap was kept indoors[B]
Steel mills did indeed operate during the winter. Plants served by ships would sometimes try to keep a few months worth of ore and coal stockpiled as ships often didn’t travel due to the lakes and rivers being frozen. Interestingly during the 60s the Pennsylvania railroad experimented with covering some of their ore jennies with foam insulation. This was to prevent moist Venezuelan taconite from freezing solid. Unfortunately the insulation had a tendency to flake off as a result of handling so the program didn’t last long. Others had small poke holes to allow a worker to insert a steam lance to thaw out the frozen ore pellets
Steel mills are similar to refineries - they only shut down for maintenance, repairs, or emergencies. And, the shutting down (and starting up) process takes literally days to complete - so it is not something taken lightly. And of course when the units are down, money is not being made.
Of course there are much more frequent instances of unit or partial shutdowns - almost always for repairs.