106-year-old blast furnace retires, melts gold watch

106-year-old blast furnace retires, melts gold watch

West Virginia-based Wheeling-Pitt Corp. (WP) announced it will decommission a blast furnace that has been in service at its Steubenville, Ohio plant since the 19th century. The No. 1 blast furnace began operation in 1899 and is one of the oldest blast furnaces in the nation. The furnace will be officially taken offline this Thursday, May 5. Its replacement is a $115 million electronic arc furnace, the cornerstone to WP’s bankruptcy emergence plan. The new furnace was first heated on November 28th of last year; it began using hot metal last week. WP is the first company in North America to use a combination of the two furnace types. This combination allows WP more flexibility in terms of raw materials such as scrap steel and coke. WP can use the electric arc furnace to produce steel from 100% scrap or from as little as 60% scrap mixed with molten iron from the blast furnace. At the time when the Steubenville furnace was brought into production, the first known use of the word “automobile” appeared in an editorial in the New York Times; Ernest Hemingway was born; and Istanbul was Constantinople.