Keystone Steel & Wire Company
Peoria, Illinois
Justin Rao
University of Illinois, Champaign
Keystone Steel & Wire, located in Peoria is a subsidiary of Keystone
Consolidated Industries, Inc. located in Dallas, Texas. Keystone’s
plant in Peoria is one of the largest wire mills in North America with over
2,000,000 square feet of manufacturing space located on more than 1000 acres.
Last year, Keystone produced over 650,000 tons of steel.
Keystone is classified as a mini-mill because of all of its products are
made from recycled steel. Because of this fact, Keystone is one of the largest
recycler in Illinois. Keystone produces a variety of different wire and
rod products for use in agriculture, industry and construction. The intern
focused on two projects. One project involved the on-site recycling of the
refractory brick. The other project dealt with the off-site recycling of
white slag.
Results:
Currently, Keystone disposes of about 3,000 tons annually of spent refractory
brick from the electric arc furnace (EAF) and ladle metallurgical
furnaces (LMF). If the bricks that are made from dolomitic-lime are crushed
to
a size of less than 1-inch, they can be used as a source of lime
and MgO, both steelmaking additives. The intern evaluated a horizontal shaft
impact
(HIS) crusher to crush the brick. Refractory brick reuse can save
Keystone $135,000 in disposal cost and an additional $360,000 in savings
by additive
replacement.
Presently, 14,000 tons of white slag produced in the LMF, is disposed of
at a cost of $630,000 annually. In other states, white slag has been approved
and used as an agricultural liming product since it is very effective in
neutralizing acidic soils. The intern recommended a screen plant to separate
large EAF slag and steel, both of which could be recycled back into the
steelmaking process. The white slag, which is a fine white powder, can be
spread as an agricultural lime product using a conventional ag-lime spreader.
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