Increasing the capacity of open-hearth plants by the use of oxygen: technical and financial considerations of various methods

Abstract

The Great Majority of the steel produced in the world is steel made in open-hearth furnaces and because of the immense amount of capital invested in these plants, there can be no question of scrapping many of them for some time to come. For this reason great interest has been focused in the last few years on the problem of increasing output from existing OH plants by the use of oxygen. The object of this paper is to examine some methods of achieving this, (section 1), and to compare the cost of applying 02 direct to the OH furnaces with the cost of changing over to one of the pneumatic processes for the increased output required, (section 2). For the purposes of this paper, the authors have taken as an example a plant of 1 m. tons capacity which it is desired to increase to 1.5 m. tons.