Market Segment
December 5, 2019
U.S. Steel to Restart Idled Blast Furnace at Gary Works
Written by Sandy Williams
Maintenance and a flooding incident have forced U.S. Steel to juggle producton on the furnaces at its Gary Works mill. Two of the three furnaces that had to be taken offline when a water pipe burst Nov. 27 are now back in operation. Blast furnaces #14 and #6 are now fully operational and #4 is expected to be back up and running by early next week, said U.S. Steel spokeswoman Amanda Malkowski. None of the furnaces were damaged by the flooding.
The #4 furnace is scheduled for planned maintenance in early 2020 and, in preparation for the outage, U.S. Steel has commenced start-up of Gary Works’ idled blast furnace #8. Blast furnace #8, with a 3,300-ton daily capacity, will support production while BF #4, at 4,200-tons capacity, is down for repairs. The start-up process for BF #8 began in early November and the furnace is expected to be operational next week.
“While we do not routinely announce operational and maintenance activities, we are providing this information to stakeholders so they are aware of the precautions being taken to ensure the safety of our process and quality of our products,” said Malkowski.
