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1850 Industrial Middletown 1948By GEORGE C. CROUTScarcity Of Scrap Ona Of Big Causes Of Siael ShortageMuch has been written o the Steel shortage which is the bot-t'eneck to increased production in many industries. flt; • steel is the banc industry ot this twentieth century—the Midnlrtown's F scrap icquircnicnt;.mately 60.000 tlt; each month. At E, eight pen hearths a scrap charge of cent Today shot t means that those1 ronAge. a s ; Works s are approx-ns of scrap is* W rks the normally use afvu t 60 per age of scrap furnaces arecharged about 40 plt; r cent sci p and 60 per cent pig iron instead.At mco first used scrap in Middletown when the compan got underway in 1900. It was used in the little 25-ton open hearth furnace at the original plant on Curtis S’reet.Over 25.000.000 cross tons of scrap were purchas* d in 1047 for the open hearth furnaces of the American iron and steel industry—and still it wasn’t enough. This, incidentally, did not include foundry production. This record amount, plus thtWe Have A Nice Variety of t hrvsanthe-mutn IMants Yellow and White Just Right For That Sick Friend.TRIMBLE’SHouse Of Flowers809 Yankee Rd. Dial 2-716022.500.000 tons of ‘‘home’’ scrap from the steel plants themselves could not push production over 93 per cent of capacity. Home or domestic scrap is that scrap which comes from within the steel plant, as in cropping ingots, shi lling operations and reclaiming slag. For-cigh scrap is that purchased from the outside.Material classified as num-1 or-one heavy melting steel is the most desirable scrap, and it comes largely from railroads and industiail plants. There are ibout 35 different grades and classifications of scrap metal, f .eh selling at a different price. Most of the iron and steel can e processed into a suitable heavy melting scrap in the preparation yard at Arrnco.Open hearth furnaces toon ne irly 35 million tons of last ear's scrap supply. Another 1 •» millions went to the electric furnaces. with a relatively small tonnage assigned to the Bessemers. Blast furnaces and ferro-alloy production used up the rest.It is possible to make s*oel entirely ol scrap without using pig iron, as is the case in electric furnaces. But pig iron and scrap is the standard charge in he open hearth process— and open hearths make 90 per cent ol our steel. Further, one ton of scrap in place of one ton of 1 m iron saves about 33» tons of valuable natural resources. Scrap has been refined at least once already and so is a time-: aver and even a money-saver —when its price is not too highThe two new electric furnaces at East Works now use about20.000 tons of scrap per month. They operate exclusively on n scrap metal charge, using about 20 nor cent domestic scrap.Great need of more available scrap material faces the country today. An important source of potential still lies in warehoused war surplus material and steel men hope to tap thisresource further. The govem-ment released some two million tons of such scrap in thus country last year and 30,000 tons overseas. In addition to possible increases from this quarter, efforts are under way to get from Western Germany slt;mo of the five to ten million to of battle scrap said to be a\ lilable there.The precarious scrap supply is conditioned by several factors. The weather is one, for when cold weather comes, scr; p collection is made more difficult. The steel industry tries to build up a reserve in the summer months to carry ii through the winter. A mechanized war increases the amount of scrap available. The ratio of oreign scrap consumed is af-fi cted by the price and avail-tbility of that commodity for when scrap is too costly, Aim-co uses a higher charge of pig iron in the furnaces. When freight rates go too high, steel companies try to use less scrap. The coal supply also affects th° use of scrap, for if coal is short. s during strikes, the steel companies conserve as much coal as pos •** e. This means It ss cr ke is made and consequently takes less pig iron as it takes coke to make pig iron. With less pig iron available, a higher percentage of scrap is charged into the open hearths.Bight now scrap is between $42 and $30 a ton, an all-time high, and may rise. The high cost of scrap has been one of the factors leading to increased production costs and boosts in steel price. In general, the steel industry is using about 50 per cent scrap and 50 per cent pig iron in steel production, or a little over 10 million tons of pig iron made from native ore and 42 million tons of scrap.The higher production hoped for this year depends largely on the success of the steel industry's scrap drive, as well as on the scrap quality, which has been poor since the war. Steel* using industries are making collections at their plants, with some aid from consumers and distributors of their products.But, as of today much of the wherewithal for capacity operation in the iron and steel industry lies rusting here and abroad — on meadows and farms, in warehouses and railroad yards.
Newspaper Details
Middletown Sunday News Journal
Middletown, Ohio, US
Sun, Sep 26, 1948
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Midpointe L.
OH, USA 30 Nov 2024
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