Rival for the Blast Furnace

Into the Armco Steel Corp. plant at Houston this week rolled three carloads of iron smelted by a radical new process. Developed by a Hungarian-born inventor, Julius Madaras, and financed by Oilman Clint Murchison and others, the process eliminates the blast furnace and promises to smelt iron cheaper and faster.

Armco had agreed to dump the iron into its electric furnaces to see if it worked as well as blast-furnace iron in the making of steel. On hand for the important test this week, the biggest to date, were observers from Jones & Laughlin, Granite City Steel and Colorado Fuel and Iron.

For some 250 years iron has been made by charging a blast furnace with ore, limestone and coke. When a blast of air is shot up through the furnace, the burning coke turns the mixture into a molten mass which separates into iron and slag. In the Madaras "direct-reduction" process, the ore is laid down in a bed minus the coke and limestone, hot hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide are pumped through it, smelting out the iron.

This is only one of five similar direct-reduction processes that are getting the close attention of steelmen. Though none is yet in sizable commercial use, the Madaras process is working successfully in a 50-ton-a-day steel mill making plates and light-gauge sheets in Monterrey, Mexico. Madaras and Murchison are presently negotiating with eight groups, five in the U.S. and three abroad, to set up 500-ton-a-day plants costing $3.5 million and expandable to 2,000 tons by an additional $3.5 million investment. They expect to announce one or more sign-ups in June.

For steelmakers, perfection of a direct-reduction process would be almost as important as was the development of the blast furnace, chiefly because it would make commercially feasible the establishment of steel plants in coal-poor areas and drastically cut the costs of expansion. To keep up with the growing U.S. economy, steelmen estimate that they must add up to 70 million tons of capacity in the next 15 years, and at a cost of $20 billion if they use present methods of steelmaking. Thus the potential saving is so great that nearly every big steelmaker is experimenting with a direct-reduction process of some kind. Among them:

P:U.S. Steel, which five years ago began work on developing direct-reduction pilot models at its South Chicago plant, is now designing an almost commercial-sized plant which it is considering locating at its Fairless Works in Bucks County, Pa. P:Republic Steel Corp. and National Lead Co. have formed a joint corporation to promote adoption of their R-N rotary-kiln process developed in Birmingham. Unlike the other processes, this one employs a solid carbon fuel instead of a reducing gas. P:Arthur D. Little, Inc. (TIME, April 1) is developing its own process, using patents from the Esso Research & Engineering Co. It was petroleum scientists who first learned how to extract hydrogen cheaply from natural gas or petroleum, and also how to use gas pressures from below to smelt ore. This "fluidized bed" method of ore-handling is used by all direct-reduction processes except the R-N method. P:Hydrocarbon Research. Inc. and Bethlehem Steel have developed and extensively tested their "H-Iron" process. This process has the unique distinction of being the only one on which detailed cost figures have so far been revealed. Hydrocarbon's Dr. Arthur M. Squires recently told an audience of oldtime blast furnacemen in Pittsburgh that a 2,200-ton-a-day "H-Iron" plant can now be built in Texas for $23 million or on the East Coast for $24 million v. $47 million for a blast furnace with the same capacity. Squires estimated that fuel costs in gas-rich Texas would be a mere $4 a ton v. $15 there for imported coke. On the East Coast, he said, fuel costs of direct reduction would be closer to those of a blast furnace ($6 v. $10), but would still give direct reduction a considerable advantage.

There are some disadvantages to the direct-reduction method. It does not remove as many impurities as a blast furnace, thus may necessitate more processing of low-grade ores. But with certain types of fine ores that mills are starting to use, it works better. Steelmen believe that most of the bugs in the direct-reduction method will be worked out in a year or so, and then one of the major companies may take the plunge and build a big plant. The first one would probably be built in the South or West, where the absence or high cost of coking coal now prevents building of blast furnaces. Meanwhile oldtimers are certain that existing blast furnaces will continue to operate for a long time, and that ways will be found to increase their efficiency. On the prospects for a changeover to direct reduction, a U.S. Steel Co. executive said: "I look for evolutionary, not revolutionary change."

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