Steel Mills

USS Pulls Ahead Planned Maintenance on Mon Valley Blast Furnace

Written by Michael Cowden

July 21, 2022

US Steel plans to take an approximately one-month outage in September on the No. 3 blast furnace at is Mon Valley Works near Pittsburgh, a company spokeswoman said.

The steelmaker plans to apply shotcrete – sprayed concrete – to the furnace, she added.

US Steel

Shotcrete is a significantly shorter and less expensive process than a full reline.

The work was originally scheduled for mid-October.

Mon Valley Works has two blast furnaces: No. 1 and No. 3. The No. 1 furnace has daily ironmaking capacity of approximately 3,200 tons. The No. 3 furnace has daily capacity of approximately 2,900 tons.

The furnaces are located at US Steel’s Edgar Thomson plant in Braddock, Pa. That facility makes slabs and rails them to the company’s Irvin Plant in West Mifflin, Pa., where they are rolled into sheet.

SMU has updated its blast furnace status table, found by clicking here, to reflect the development.

By Michel Cowden, Michael@SteelMarketUpdate.com

Michael Cowden

Michael Cowden is managing editor for Steel Market Update. Cowden has covered the steel industry since 2007. He has since 2014 specialized in flat-rolled steel but has previously reported on steel long products, steel pipe and tube as well as aluminum. Before joining SMU, Cowden held reporting jobs at Fastmarkets AMM in Chicago - where he was involved in launching AMM's daily hot-rolled coil index, the Associated Press in Pittsburgh, and the Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh. He has also worked as a copy editor and in marketing at the University of Chicago Press. Cowden has a BA in English from the University of Chicago and an MSJ journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Contact him at michael@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7872.

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