Steel Mills

USS Planned Outage Underway at Mon Valley’s No. 3, Could Stay Idled

Written by David Schollaert

September 1, 2022

US Steel’s month-long outage on No. 3 blast furnace at Mon Valley Works near Pittsburgh is underway, a company spokeswoman confirmed to SMU.

US SteelThe blast furnace was taken offline early Wednesday morning following a successful blowdown. Water quenching is scheduled for the weekend, and shotcrete will begin after Labor Day.

“It did go offline safely,” she said. “It is scheduled to be a month-long outage.”

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

The planned outage was originally scheduled for mid-October but was pulled forward by more than a month. The scope of the outage is to apply shotcrete – sprayed concrete – to the furnace, she added.

A source familiar with the matter said that US Steel is considering keeping the No. 3 blast furnace idled after the shotcrete maintenance is complete. The reason for the potential idling is that the Pittsburgh-based steelmaker’s orders are down.

When asked for comment on the potential idling, US Steel simply said it “will continue to monitor market conditions.”

Mon Valley Works has two blast furnaces: No. 1 and No. 3. The No. 1 furnace has a daily ironmaking capacity of approximately 3,200 tons. The No. 3 furnace has a 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 David Schollaert, David@SteelMarketUpdate.com

David Schollaert

David Schollaert is a senior analyst for Steel Market Update. David joined SMU after more than a decade in the metals and mining industry in a myriad of different roles. Much of his early experience and expertise were within the coverage and analysis of steel-making raw materials and served previously as senior editor of the CRU Prices Service. Most recently, however, before his return to market analysis, David held roles as a metals buyer and an operations manager for raw material suppliers. Based in CRU’s Pittsburgh office, David can be reached at david@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-720-1008.

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