Murphy SidingIs there every other metals in with the iron ore?
The usual iron ore mineral is hematite. Magnatite is another that has Fe++ in addition to Fe+++. Magnatite can be seperated out by running the flotation slurry over magnets. Other metal elements often associated with iron mines are those close to Fe in the periodic table like Mn, Cr, Ti. They are probably more like trace elements in the big Lake Superior mines. Nevertheless there may be mines with lots more. I recollect that the Tahwas Mine in the Adirondacks had considerable Ti, although there may have been some segregation of ore bodies.
MidlandMikethe Tahawas Mine in the Adirondacks had considerable Ti...
That was a primary reason the line was built - to access the titanium. Even today, there is occasionally talk of hauling the tailings out.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Overmod Retired steelworker here. I spent the last few years working in the "scrap yard". We receive scrap from both truck and rail and all scrap passes through radiation detectors. If a truck indicates radiation it is rejected because it is too much of a hastle to be dealt with on site but if a railcar had radiation it is spotted at an open area and a hand held detector can find it with a few feet and then a crane would mag out of the car and the piece(s) could be found and then isolated. The detectors are so sensitive that employees who had radiation treatment (cancer) up to at least a week previously would set off the detectors from quite a distance away. ClassA I recall once there was concern about radioactive scrap making it's way into steel. Is that still a concern?
Retired steelworker here. I spent the last few years working in the "scrap yard". We receive scrap from both truck and rail and all scrap passes through radiation detectors. If a truck indicates radiation it is rejected because it is too much of a hastle to be dealt with on site but if a railcar had radiation it is spotted at an open area and a hand held detector can find it with a few feet and then a crane would mag out of the car and the piece(s) could be found and then isolated. The detectors are so sensitive that employees who had radiation treatment (cancer) up to at least a week previously would set off the detectors from quite a distance away.
ClassA I recall once there was concern about radioactive scrap making it's way into steel. Is that still a concern?
Be careful here. The issue I remember with radioactive contamination was for very specific circumstances: use of steel for construction of diagnostic and test equipment that could be thrown off by the relatively small residual atmospheric concentration of nuclides in all steel processed since the era of above-ground weapons testing -- leading at the time of realization to finding pre-WWII sources of scrap, notably sunken warships in the Pacific, that were free of the problem.
I do not know if modern cost-effective processes can remove those elements from scrap; I suspect that careful sourcing and treatment of virgin ores could provide 'new' alloy steels without this low level of nuclear contamination, but perhaps not at economical scale at all points in the required processing.
If there is, or has been, a concern with actual 'health' levels of radioactive contamination of scrap (e.g. with americium from older smoke detectors and the like) I'd like to know more details.
What do recycled cars get made into? I see a lot of flattened cars being hauled by trucks. Does any of that traffic move by train?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Are there actually situations where scrap iron or steel is melted down and directly made into a product? My understanding was that scrap iron could be recycled but the result would be blended with iron ore / taconite pellets to produce useable iron/steel.
Removing radioactive material from a rail car is not really that difficult but it is a pain in the you know what. The rail scale is setup with radiation detectors which are very sensitive. If an alarm was tripped the car was moved back and forth very slowly three times to make sure it was a "true" reading. If it is true its just a matter of magging it out of the car and spreading it out on the ground to locate it with a hand held detector. Usually a few magloads of scrap until you find it and then put it in an end loader a moving it to an appointed quarantied area and have an outside contractor take care of it. When an alarm was set off the whole department was aware so there was no chance of contaminated scrap being used. I worked in a "mini-mill" which only uses scrap metal, so I cannot comment on iron ore.
I'll reply to several people here. I don't post very often since I've been on moderation for about 10 years and I'm tired of not being able to have a prompt response.
nyc ohio, much cast iron is 100 % scrap due to the lesser demand for it these days. An exception would be high volume items like engine castings which would use a high percentage of pig iron.
murphy siding- Crushed autos are bound for a shredder. There a large hammermill will reduce them to fist size pieces easily separated by magnets. This is a prime feedstock for arc furnaces.
Overmod- radioactive materials in steel are a real concern when quantities of highly radioactive materials are involved. The incidents which brought this to attention involved aged medical machines palmed off to third world countries where they were never used for the intended purpose. These usually involved cancer treatment equipment that used Cobalt 60 as a source. One incident in Brazil resulted in several fatalities when children played with the luminous pellets form such a machine. It came to light in the U.S. when cast iron table bases cast in Mexico and contaminated with Cobalt 60 were detected at a military base in the US. Americium 241 is not a real threat because it is produced in tiny quantities in fission reactions. A ton of spent fuel contains about 100 grams of it. The only common use for it is in smoke detectors and 100 grams is probably a years supply for the U.S.
However the Nuclear regulartory Commission and the nuclear power industry subscribe to ALARA which means "as low as reasonably achievable". Therefore they perform as though it is the end of the world. ALARA is on the whole a very good standard but should not be used to establish fear in the general population.
I have been away from the scrap industry for 25 years but when I was invilved the procedure for radioactive scrap was " Your car no xxxxxxx has been rejected for radioactivity. Have it removed within 48 hours".
Once you remove that material on your property it is your problem. You might have it moved to a local yard to be cleaned up at extreme cost.
Steel produced since the Trinity test may have traces of elements that did not even exist before that test, such as Americium 241. For most application this is no problem. However in a nuclear power plant if you want to bring an object. let's say a screwdriver, out of containment or any "radiation controlled area" it must pass thruogh a " Small Arcticle Monitor". This looks very much like a safe and is contructed of pre 1945 steel. It will detect minute amounts of radiation and you will lose that article in accordance with ALARA. Very common with hard hats as Radon gas seems to love to adhere to shiny plastic. If the RP staff cannot wipe it off in a couple of tries you need a new one.
Now geoff, scrap prices. If you got 8 cents per lb that is 179.20/gt. Not bad for you. The dealer has to prepare it (sort and size) and deliver to the mill. I'll let someone here who is familiar with rates tells what it cost to deliver to , say, 200 miles away. The mill has to handle it in and melt it. It takes about $40.00 in electricity to melt 1 ton of steel. The melt is then cast into billets ( for bar and rod products) and may have to be reheated before rolling. I t is rolled into bars or structural shapes or drawn into rod for wire production, which requires premium grades of scrap.
By the time your scrap is processed, shipped, melted, rolled, and shipped again there is considerable money involved and it's not even at you local dealer yet. And that service center, to use the popular nam, has to study and order from the rolling schedules for mills all over the country ( and maybe outside the US) to have the item you want when you want it. No body works for free, at least not for long.
To deliver say 22 tons of scrap 200 miles if we're talking bales I would be charging between 3 to 3.50 a mile loaded for it. It breaks down to about less than 2 cents per pound to ship to the mill. That's figuring on coming back empty for another load.
I recall once there was concern about radioactive scrap making it's way into steel. Is that still a concern?
beaulieu The Mesabi Nuggets plants in Minnesota were shut down during the last Iron Ore price crash. Even though Iron Ore prices have rebounded I haven't heard that the plants have reopened.
The Mesabi Nuggets plants in Minnesota were shut down during the last Iron Ore price crash. Even though Iron Ore prices have rebounded I haven't heard that the plants have reopened.
In the August Trains p29, they mention that a prospect for Northshore Mining is a "higher grade pellet for use in hot-briquetted-iron plants that make feedstock for modern electric arc furnaces." From what I can find this seems like a slightly lower temperature process than iron nuggets. Northshore is owned by Cleveland-Cliffs. Most of the other taconite producers are part of intergrated steel companies with their own blast furnaces. Cliffs is just an ore producer/shipper, and wants to also participate in the electric furnace feedstock side of the industry.
Cleveland Cliffs just built an HBI plant in Toledo near the docks. I'm not sure if it's in production yet.
GEOFF HILTONBe careful here. The issue I remember with radioactive contamination was for very specific circumstances: use of steel for construction of diagnostic and test equipment that could be thrown off by the relatively small residual atmospheric concentration of nuclides in all steel processed since the era of above-ground weapons testing -- leading at the time of realization to finding pre-WWII sources of scrap, notably sunken warships in the Pacific, that were free of the problem.
Although I was aware of some limited salvage at Scapa Flow of German wrecks for such use, I didn't give it much thought past that. I wonder if this is why illegal salvage of some coastal wrecks like HMS Prince of Wales and USS Houston have been happening.
Some recent discoveries are now little more than a depression in the seabed like HMAS Perth, the submarine USS Perch (Luckily not a war grave thanks to the whole crew being able to abandon ship), and several Dutch naval vessels.
Before the money ran out and shuttered the program, I was always relieved to hear a wreck was in deep water when the late Paul Allen's team on the Petrel was on a roll with their WWII shipwreck discoveries. Being a few miles down is the best protection there is for a shipwreck, with only Titanic ever having been disturbed to any degree to my knowledge.
Leo_Ames GEOFF HILTON Be careful here. The issue I remember with radioactive contamination was for very specific circumstances: use of steel for construction of diagnostic and test equipment that could be thrown off by the relatively small residual atmospheric concentration of nuclides in all steel processed since the era of above-ground weapons testing -- leading at the time of realization to finding pre-WWII sources of scrap, notably sunken warships in the Pacific, that were free of the problem. Although I was aware of some limited salvage at Scapa Flow of German wrecks for such use, I didn't give it much thought past that. I wonder if this is why illegal salvage of some coastal wrecks like HMS Prince of Wales and USS Houston have been happening. Some recent discoveries are now little more than a depression in the seabed like HMAS Perth, the submarine USS Perch (Luckily not a war grave thanks to the whole crew being able to abandon ship), and several Dutch naval vessels. Before the money ran out and shuttered the program, I was always relieved to hear a wreck was in deep water when Paul Allen's team on the Petrel was on a roll with their WWII shipwreck discoveries. Being a few miles down is the best protection there is for a shipwreck, with only Titanic ever having been disturbed to any degree to my knowledge.
GEOFF HILTON Be careful here. The issue I remember with radioactive contamination was for very specific circumstances: use of steel for construction of diagnostic and test equipment that could be thrown off by the relatively small residual atmospheric concentration of nuclides in all steel processed since the era of above-ground weapons testing -- leading at the time of realization to finding pre-WWII sources of scrap, notably sunken warships in the Pacific, that were free of the problem.
Before the money ran out and shuttered the program, I was always relieved to hear a wreck was in deep water when Paul Allen's team on the Petrel was on a roll with their WWII shipwreck discoveries. Being a few miles down is the best protection there is for a shipwreck, with only Titanic ever having been disturbed to any degree to my knowledge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGlYwcE98-M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyNm_x5pZdA
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
MidlandMike In the August Trains p29, they mention that a prospect for Northshore Mining is a "higher grade pellet for use in hot-briquetted-iron plants that make feedstock for modern electric arc furnaces." From what I can find this seems like a slightly lower temperature process than iron nuggets. Northshore is owned by Cleveland-Cliffs. Most of the other taconite producers are part of intergrated steel companies with their own blast furnaces. Cliffs is just an ore producer/shipper, and wants to also participate in the electric furnace feedstock side of the industry.
I was referring to significant disturbance by man (Like the theory in that 2nd video about submersibles landing on Titanic to deploy ROV's to explore the forward grand staircase area has caused significant damage to the wreck). Obviously some deepwater wrecks are undergoing significant natural deterioration like the Titanic herself is (While others like the Yorktown off Midway are almost in a state of suspended animation).
But for shipwrecks at substantial depths, only Titanic to the best of my knowledge has generated enough interest where quite a bit of salvage has been done, lots of interior exploration has been undertaken, and lots of bumps and bruises have happened to the wreck during the course of exploration by various groups.
In the future, being discussed is cutting into the bow section itself to retrieve components of Titanic's wireless system (Which I believe is still going through the courts). Not necessarily against what has happened with Titanic, but she's definitely in a class of her own where human intrusion at a depth of ~12,000' is concerned.
For other deepwater wrecks at extreme depths, the depth they rests in is a great asset for the preservation of the wreck and protecting the gravesite that it represents from activities like illegal salvage.
Historically, the mining companies in Minnesota and Michigan were subsidiaries or in some way affiliated with one of the large eastern steel corporations. In past times on Minnesota's Mesabi Range you could usually tell who owned what since the Duluth Missabe & Iron Range was owned by United States Steel, and served mining operations owned (directly or indirectly) by U.S. Steel. Non-U.S. Steel mining operations would be served by Great Northern.
What's interesting is that Ford Steel used to get their taconite from the Missabe range. In fact, the Fairlane Taconite Plant was named because of the partial Ford ownership. Now, with Ford Steel was spun off into Rouge Steel, then Severstal and now AK Steel, their ore comes from the Tilden Mine near Marquette, MI and is shipped via Interlake. There are 2-3 ships always in rotation between Marquette and Dearborn. It's usually either the Herbert C. Jackson, Kay E. Barker and Hon. James L. Oberstar. Two are usually needed with the third doing something else but alternating.
beaulieuCleveland Cliffs... owns the HBI plant in Indiana, AK Steel in Ohio, and has bought the US operations of ArcelorMittal giving it Blast Furnaces at Burns Harbor and Indiana Harbor, both in Indiana, and also at Middletown and Cleveland in Ohio.
I see they have deversified quite a bit in the last year and a half.
Last week I noticed that the Arcelor finishing mill in Riverdale (ex-Interlake, ex-Acme Steel) is now lettered for Cliffs.
Do they still get the thermos bottles of molton steel over the former PRR line?
The bottle train still operates but its current route is over IHB from the the former Inland Steel plant at Indiana Harbor to Riverdale.
OWTX Direct reduced iron (DRI) and pig iron can also be used as feedstock in EAF steel. Conversely BF-BOF mills can have scrap in the mix.
Direct reduced iron (DRI) and pig iron can also be used as feedstock in EAF steel. Conversely BF-BOF mills can have scrap in the mix.
Nucor has a DRI plant in Louisiana to supply DRI to its mills.
"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)
Been to Riverdale by CSX Barr Yrd and have seen them pour molten steel by the plant there
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