Steel Mill- what commodities?

justinroth

Well-known member
I am currently modeling a steel mill (Columbus Steel Castings) and am wondering what commodities would typically be consumed, and maybe what byproducts would be shipped away via rail?
 
It depends on the type of steel mill. If the mill has a blast furnace you would consume coke, iron ore, and limestone. It would produce molten steel and slag. The slag would go to a slag dump to cool. The molten steel would then be moved to the Basic Oxygen Furnace where the it would be made into slabs, from there the steel slabs would be moved to a rolling mill for cutting and other refinements. It is also possible the plant could have an electric arc furnace where scrap metal is brought in and melted down and made into new steel slabs and then moved to the rolling mill, again for cutting and refinement. The rolling mill will ship out plates, coils and other types of steel. A lot of plants have a pipe mill where the steel is rolled into pipe so that is also another possible outbound load.

Disclaimer: this is all from memory so all information may not be 100% accurate.
 
The furnaces actually consume coke, which is a refined coal with a lot of the impurities taken out of it. The coal is taken to coking plant where it is refined into coke, then the coke is shipped to the furnace.
 
Much appreciated! I couldn't really find any cars with a visible coke load, so I just went with consuming coal/limestone/scrap.
 
To Produce Coke it is heated in a Airless Coke Oven to a temperature of about 2000 C This drives off any water and produces Coal gas. The gas can be used at other locations within the plant for heating.
 
I made up this simple flow chart in MS Power Point for fertilizers just for a visual idea of what types of equipment and materials would be required to supply a fertilizer plant. Small font are notes, many stating the obvious.

I also found this steel production flow chat on line, hope it is of some help.
Fertilizer_zpslqznth9u.jpg


steel-production-flow-chart_zpsyjht0qt1.jpg

 
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