pa1778data.pdf

U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS
HAER No. PA-115
(Page 10)
period of the experiment, not one stove was taken off line for
cleaning. The successful application of wet blast furnace gas
cleaning made it possible to design stoves with significantly
smaller checkerwork openings, thereby substantially increasing
the total heating surface of each stove. This resulted in the
production of higher hot blast temperatures, which increased the
output of each furnace. Results such as these, as well as the
information his experiment yielded, made Diehl one of the
foremost authorities on blast furnace gas cleaning in the
industry. The system he devised became a standard method of
cleaning blast furnace gas. 9
The modernization of the steelmaking facilities at the
Duquesne Works began in 1901 with the construction of a basic
open hearth plant (Open Hearth Number One), consisting of twelve
50-ton stationary open hearth furnaces. Open hearth technology
was first developed for commercial use at the nearby Homestead
Works in 1888, and had two important advantages over the older
Bessemer steelmaking process. First, open hearth furnaces were
able to eliminate phosphorus and sulphur from molten iron,
something that could not be done with Bessemer converters. This
opened up vast quantities of American iron ore deposits high in
phosphorus content for use in steelmaking. Second, the use of
open hearth technology allowed for the production of many more
grades of steel than could be produced in Bessemer converters.
This was especially significant at Duquesne which became an
important producer of specialized steel bars for the eastern
market throughout most of the twentieth century. In 1908, as a
consequence of these advantages, Bessemer steelmaking was
completely abandoned when a second basic open hearth plant (Open
Hearth Number Two) was constructed. Finally, a 20-ton capacity
Heroult electric furnace was built at one end of the furnace
building at Open Hearth Number Two in 1917 for the purpose of
further refining certain grades of molten open hearth steel. 10
9 A. N. Diehl, "The Blast Furnace Regenerative Stove," The Iron
Age 89(March 7, 1912): 580; "Operation of Blast Furnace Gas
Engines," The Iron Age 88(July 6, 1911): 36-8; A. N. Diehl, "Data
Pertaining to Gas Cleaning at the Duquesne Blast Furnaces,"
Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers
50(1915): 3-46; J. M. Camp and C. B. Francis, eds., The Making.
Fourth Edition, 175-9; A. N, Diehl, "How to Clean Blast Furnace
Gas," The Iron Trade Review 54(March 26, 1914): 590-3; A. N. Diehl,
"Keeping Your Furnace Gas Clean," The Iron Trade Review 54(March
12, 1914): 516-8; and Johnson, Blast Furnace Construction, 298,
306-7, 322-7.
10 "The Open Hearth Plant and 40-Inch Blooming Mill of the
Carnegie Steel Co. , at Duquesne, Pa.," The Iron Trade Review