pa1778data.pdf

U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS
HAER No. PA-115
(Page 180)
accommodate roof charging, and was moved to the D.P.C. facility.
A new, roof charged, 85-ton furnace was also constructed in the
D.P.C. building. In order to facilitate the new furnaces, a
325'-0" addition to the charging aisle was constructed at the
southern end of the building, and the mould conditioning platform
located along the eastern wall of the pouring aisle's southern
end was converted to a teeming platform. A new mould
conditioning platform was built at the southern end of the
adjacent steel conditioning building. At the same time, a 112'-
0" addition to the pouring aisle was constructed at the northern
end of the building to accommodate the installation of two more
vacuum degassing units. An important result of the expansion was
that it enabled the casting of 110" diameter heavy forging ingots
weighing 480,000 lbs. This was done by successively tapping
heats from the three largest furnaces while the casting process
was in operation. 5
The last of the major changes to the electric furnace
steelmaking system at the Duquesne Works occurred between 1960
and the early 1970s with the installation of air pollution
control equipment. In 1961, a smoke filtering system was
introduced at the electric furnace plant. Developed by the
Corporation's engineering and research division in Monroeville,
PA, the equipment operated much like a giant vacuum cleaner.
Smoke, in theory, from all of the plant's five electric furnaces
was drawn up through a fume-collecting hood located near the roof
of the building by a large fan and pushed through a rough gas
main by a blower into a bag house. Thirty foot long fiber glass
fabric bags filtered out the solid particles from the smoke and
the cleaned gas was exhausted through flues protruding through
the roof of the bag house. Dust collected in the filter bags was
periodically removed by collapsing the bags in individual
compartments while the other compartments continued to operate.
The accumulated particulate was trucked from the plant to a
storage area.
The installation of the aforementioned smoke control
equipment, however, was of limited success. The continued
presence in the local environment of a large percentage of
untreated smoke emitted from the electric furnaces prompted local
environmental groups to conduct a protest campaign against plant
officials in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Partly as a result
of their activities, the Allegheny County Department of
Development reached an agreement with the Corporation for the
installation of additional equipment. County officials agreed to
finance the purchase of additional baghouse equipment through
municipal bonds. For its part, the company agreed to install the
new equipment and lease it from the county. The new system was
put into operation in 1972. 6