Bottle Cars

Typically in a electric furnace the material used is scrap metal, fluxing agents, and some pig iron. There are some cases where iron pellet injection is being used, and also limited uses of molten iron. The vast majority of electric arc furnaces EAFs will not have bottle cars moving molten iron to the EAF shop. 

I have come across a few examples of EAFs that will fill bottle cars for transport of molten steel to other areas of the plant for finishing. 

Bottle cars typically are used to transport molten iron from a blast furnace to a converter. Bessemer Converters in earlier mills, Open Hearths, and finally the somewhat modern Basic Oxygen Furnace. 

Every mill does things differently, but in general the bottle cars have an electric motor that turns a large pinion and bull gear to turn the bottle into the pouring position.  The cars pour into a few different apparatus.

A. Mixers or giant holding tanks of molten iron

B. Charging ladles used to hoist the molten iron to where it can charge a converter.

C. Pig casters, turning molten iron into smaller "pigs" of solid iron

The box on the one end of the Walthers car is where the electric motor and gears are housed.

Ask away, I spend way too much time working around then going home and studying this stuff. 

Bob 

Found this after dropping

Found this after dropping "bottle" from the search parameters and using only "torpedo"

It appears that in the steel industry they call them either "torpedo' or "submarine" cars, not 'bottle" cars.

I found this video that

I found this video that appears to be a car similar to what you found

So it looks like the torpedo car must be on a track located above the ladle, and/or the ladle must be in a pit of some sort?

Good video

Good video of car to ladle transfer.

The biggest thing you have to remember when modeling steel is that no two mills are the same. Even mills owned by the same company will have differences, often due to space during construction of the mill.

Bottle cars will empty the molten iron into ladles/mixers either in pits or by having the track elevated. Again this is often dictated by the topography the mill is constructed at. 

As for nomenclature for the car itself. This varies widely across the industry as terms like "torpedo, bottle, and submarine" are slang terms and not industry terms. 

I have copies of Treadwell and PECOR books that have the technical name as Hot Metal Car. Usually defined by the capacity  100, 150, 200 ton etc etc. 

The mill I work at frequently in the Pittsburgh area usually calls them ladle cars or bottle cars. 

Bob

@barr_ceo

Having a little problem telling what is ground level in that video you posted? Is the torpedo car at ground level, and the ladle in a pit??

That was one of the problems i was having to figure out,...how the torpedo cars got their loads into the ladles in the EAF plant of Walthers? I could not image the 2 of them at the same level during any pouring?

Pit

Brian, 

The first video is from the Jamshedpur works in India. 

Did a little google maps research and I could not make out  a ramp for the bottles so I would assume they come into the building at grade, the ladles then would be in pits. 

But again that is going to a converter not a EAF.  

Interesting

EAF Charging Bucket

EAFs use what is called a charging bucket to load scrap.

The bucket looks like an iron ladle, but has a clamshell  like bottom that opens when the bucket is over the EAF body. 

You should be able to find a lot of videos of EAF operations on YouTube. EAF mills are more abundant and tend to have more public tours then Blast Furnaces. 

The Walthers EAF kit leaves out a lot of the processes involved, but its a good start.

There are a few errors in Stogies post, but the particulars tend to not be that important in modeling since we are not handling molten metals. 

...

....

@Bessemer Bob

If you look at this posting you will see that I have provided for a 'scrap steel pile' outside my EAF, and a track for the gondola cars to take them inside the building.

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/steel-mill-scene-in-a-corner-now-coke-plant-power-plant-12209837
 

I just couldn't figure how to make the hot iron metal transfer the least bit believable,....but now I think I have finally. I'll have to modify the interior parts of the Walthers kit just a bit.

BTW, I believe the EAF is loaded with BOTH scrap metal and hot metal from the blast furnace.

DRI and EAF

Brian, 

As mentioned in an earlier post, there are some furnaces designed to take DRI  in form of molten but these are uncommon. 

We service multiple facilities that utilize the EAF process and non of which use molten but instead will use pig iron. Most cases no DRI is added in the process and they are 100% scrap fed for stock. 

US Steel had a EAF operation at the Duquesne works that used a minimal amount of molten iron but was still majority scrap fed. Later the J&L EAF in Pittsburgh was 100% scrap fed and this lead to the closing of the blast furnace department. There are a few others in the midwest that again use 100% scrap stock, and a furnaces are being modernized to accept iron pellets or tac pellets for the iron process. 

Common EAFs will consume huge quantities of scrap, with minimal use of pig iron and flux agents. You might have a covered hopper or two switched out every couple of days along with a gondola of pig iron. 

End of the day it is your railroad so the operation should be what you would like. Hot metal to the EAF is certainly plausible. In the Walthers kit the easiest way to achieve this would be to cut a hole in the floor and stage a ladle in the hole, use the rail guides in the floor for the bottles. 

Add a overhead crane bay on the side of the building for scrap unloading. I know you can get the EAF charging buckets and carts on shapways.  Sadly the Walthers kit is very undersized for the operation, consider you need anywhere from 100-300 tons of scrap metal per heat. Also would need slag ladles and finished steel ladles all in the same space.. 

Last thing to consider is what are you doing with that steel once the heat is done? Teaming ingots, continuous caster, or into a transfer car to another building? Options there are many. 

Thanks Bob, I was not aware

Thanks Bob, I was not aware that a lot of this steel was being made ALL from scraps,.... I thought they still needed some molten metal (iron) in the mix,...at least that is what I saw in most of my reading. Perhaps I was just reading old stuff...ha...ha.

What I'm thinking is I can have a bit of a rise in the torpedo car track that enters the electric furnace, and then a bit of a pit for the ladles. That should be enough for the 'imagined' pouring of hot metal into the ladles. I really what to have torpedo cars in my steel mill scene, as I consider them essential to the overall image.

I thought I would be using less scrap, and it would be supplied in gondola loads, picked up by a magnetic adapted head to the overhead crane in the building. Aside I thought I would have a small supply of scrap metal just outside the building that would be unloaded/loaded into those gondolas by another small crane. ...so another small 'operation' to get that scrap steel into the building.

I would also like to have the steel produced be loaded into ingots, then transferred to the rolling mill. Not all prototypical perhaps, but all I can fit into my limited space.

Its always likely

Brian, 

I always try to remember "its just a model" so if you want molten iron, model it! 

As you mentioned there are furnaces set up to use molten iron along with scrap in the EAF process.

Not so much that its an older technology, its that a big reason we see such a huge rise in stand alone EAF facilities is two fold. 

1. Turning ore into iron is costly and require a lot of energy (energy=money)

2. EAF tech has come a long way and a very high quality steel is coming from the EAF process. 

What time period are you modeling?  The iron DRI is still sound for any period, but some of the other supporting factors did change over the years. 

Bob 

No molten iron, thus no blast

No molten iron, thus no blast furnace, ...no thanks.

The blast furnace is THE ICONIC structure on the model railroad steel scene. Just because modern steel making can do without them doesn't mean a thing to me.

I'm not following any specific time period.

Way More

Than I would ever likely want to know on the subject, but blast (!) to read, nonetheless. Learned a lot here, as is the case with most forums on this site. 

EAF steelmake

Hi Brian, all,

If you had "unlimited" electrical power then you could run big EAF's but for anything prior to probably the 1960's, if you as a steelmaker wanted an EAF then you probably had to generate your own juice for the EAF. This was a costly electrical power plant build that didn't make you a ton of steel until you had the EAF running. As opposed to the open hearth process where you could use the (almost free) gas from coke ovens and blast furnaces to melt the scrap in the melt bath.

I've been doing some looking around, but in simple terms molten iron from the blast furnace has plant about 4% carbon in it, steel is GENERALLY less than 1% carbon. This excess carbon has to be burnt out of the molten iron during the steelmaking process of whatever type. The exception here is the higher alloyed special steel like tool steels. These can go much higher than the less then 1% carbon needed for most steels including stainless steels. Here is where an EAF with a "drink" approach comes into its own. 

Also have a look at  https://www.worldsteel.org/en/dam/jcr:16ad9bcd-dbf5-449f-b42c-b220952767bf/fact_raw%2520materials_2019.pdf   Especially the information at the end of Route 2 (bottom left of Page 1) This is pretty recent information that broadly indicates an EAF average of about 25% charge of molten iron form the blast furnace (60Mtpa of blast furnace molten iron for the 480 Mtpa via EAF route) 

As I've said previously, a molten-iron "drink" can reduce the processing time inside your furnace because the molten iron and the carbon in it can replace some of the juice needed to melt the scrap inside the EAF. 

So yes you can run torpedo ladles to your EAF. The ladle catching the metal from the' torpedo ladle will be in a pit but that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to accurately model it. Remember that the overhead cranes in the building do most of the heavy transfer work around the EAF.

If you are going to model an EAF make sure that you have some ladles with pouring spouts for charging hot metal. These should be about < 50% the size of your EAF vessel. The ones catching the finished steel will have flat circular tops and a bottom slide gate mechanism for teeming ingots inside the building. The ladles catching the finished steel should be probably about 120% of your EAF furnace volume.

Most of these special steels needed bottom-pour moulds. This prevented unwanted reactions inside the ingot as it solidified inside the mould. Bottom pour moulds are a whole different topic than those supplied in the Walthers kit, but they could probably be easily "fudged" with some air-drying clay or similar. Open top moulds like those in the Walthers kits were sometimes used at Port Kembla EAF, but they were the "exception" rather than the "rule".   

Thank You JohnG

You always seem to be able to supply such useful and expansive information.

I'm going to have to inspect my ladles more closely as I'm not sure I have that much of a selection.

Yesterday I did manage to make myself a pit for those ladles (2) to sit in while getting a charge of hot metal from the torpedo car. I'll document that a bit later.

NOTE: I did find this opening statement on that site you referenced,..interesting...

Ladle Pit

Still haven't seen any still-photos of those torpedo cars unloading their hot metal into the ladles. But those videos confirmed the unloading occurring with the ladles below the torpedo car. The thought occurred to me that I could have my torpedo car come into the EAF on the same elevated track that feeds the highline of the BF,...thus that turnout that feeds the two tracks would not have to operate askew.

I decided to only use a small rise to my highline tracks,...1/4” paint stir strips. And then I used wood wedges to get that rise,
 

then trimming the excess edges off of that...
 

The torpedo track raised up by the same amount
 

But that elevation would not be enough to pour into those ladles. Solution,..make pit that the lades could fit down into,...and why not 2 ladles since the torpedo car as so much more hot metal.
 

I'm now happy with this depiction that Walthers failed to give us.

Apparently this person was

Apparently this person was having trouble with this unloading problem as well,....and made a crude pit/cutout for his ladle/torpedo pair to work,..

http://empcccc.sourceforge.net/Walthers-HO-EAF%202018-5-28-2.JPG

@JohnG, I need to read your postings more thoroughly

I do need to read your postings more thoroughly!!     I was just looking back thru this other discussions and found the video reference you made to the unloading process,..ALONG with the time-stamped narrative.

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/steel-mill-scene-in-a-corner-now-coke-plant-power-plant-12209837

Something must have 'soaked thru' as at least I got the pit idea from that video.

PS: May have to make my pit a little larger, but concerned about the already short EAF building,..(got to leave room for the cooking oven/cradle in there)

Space

Brian, 

That is going to be the largest (pun) issue you will run into when modeling steel. Really any aspect of steel is huge. Even the stand alone mills that use EAFs take up a huge amount of space. 

On another thread I wrote a reply to one modeler that for steel it is "important to capture the feel of the process and not the exact steps" 

I think you are heading in the right direction and have already noted how you will make things fit the given space. 

Bob

Makes me Wonder,... no new blast furnaces, nor rebuilds

posted recently on a steel forum....

Makes me wonder what would ever happen if we got into a prolonged war/military action like (or even much smaller than) occurred with WWll. It is generally acknowledged that it was the industrial might of the USA that very significantly contributed to the defeat of Germany and Japan,...our capability to not only produce war materials for ourselves, but to also supply our allies. Naturally steel is a VERY IMPORTANT part of that equation.

Also of interest is one of the contributing factors to Japan's expansion into other regions of Asia and the south pacific at the time,...oil energy and steel supplies. We had cut off their supply of scrap steel, and they didn't really have a source of raw materials to make steel.

Comments on the above

Re-lining and rebuilds are still happening, USS did a major re-line and a partial in recent years of the Mon Valley furnaces, and a major upgrade to the cast house of the #3 furnace. 

Why do we no longer see construction of new BFs in the US? Well like all questions there is not a single simple answer, but two key factors are a play. Steel market volatility, the market for steel tends to have very large swings. In the modern (post 1980) world the time and capital needed for such a project would likely have to weather two slumps in the steel market before the first tap. Investors (since all US based producers are publicly traded) often will not wait out down turns. 

EPA- Probably the underlining reason for no new BFs would be environmental restrictions. Permits to build a new furnace from local, state, and federal levels is likely a nightmare and extremely costly. It makes more sense to just continue to do small upgrades when needed to keep current furnaces within regulation restrictions. 

This is also why we no longer see coke works constructions and also why Arcelor Mittal (Now Cleveland Cliffs) buy up a bunch of smaller idled coke plants in the past 20yrs. You can get permits to operate standing plants but you to build new... Likely impossible. 

The plan to move to a EAF and idle Fairfields No.8 had been in the works years before it was time to reline it. USS is continuing to attempted to transform its physical plant to one that is modern and able to more rapidly adjust to market conditions. EAFs can come on and off line much faster then a BF, and also take much less in the way of people power and logistics of material.  Think of the logistics of getting iron ore to Fairfield! 

Swing economy is also why we see some of the "biggest" BFs gone. Sparrows point and Fairfield were large furnaces. Smaller furnaces allow for more flexibility. 

The bigger issue is how EAF technology is slowly killing off the need for Blast Furnaces. Iron injection technology is moving along as well that will likely cause a few more BFs to fall. 

The sad fact is, the world is moving forward faster and faster it seems. The icon of American industrial might slowly becomes a thing of the past. I would not be surprised if by 2040 the US was down to less then 10 BFs. 

At least we can pick a year and stick with it on the model railroad..

Blast Furnace Inspiration

Sigh of the times I guess.

One note I would make, I do not think Walthers would have been nearly as successful with inspiring model railroaders, nor steel mill modelers, to come forward in droves without the introduction of the blast furnace structure.