Keystone Steel & Wire
Peoria, Illinois
Justin Rao
University of Illinois, Urbana-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. They produce a variety of different wire and rod products
for use in agriculture, industry and construction.
Result:
The intern focused on two projects.
- One project dealt with the off-site recycling of white slag produced
in the Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) and the Ladle Metallurgical Furnace
(LMF). Presently, 14,000 tons of white slag is disposed of in landfill
at a cost of $630,000. The intern recommended a screen plant to separate
the slag into three components, oversize EAF, ladle slag, and steel.
Oversize EAF slag can be sold as road aggregate. The ladle slag can
be used in the production of cement clinker or spread as an agricultural
lime product on farmland. The steel is already being recycled and saves
the facility $300,000 annually.
- The other project dealt with the on-site recycling of 3,000 tons
per year of refractory brick. The refractories used in the EAF are a
high magnesium oxide (MgO) brick. The refractories used in the LMF are
made up of a dolomitic-lime. If the brick can be crushed to less than
1-inch in size, both the MgO and dolomitic lime are steelmaking additives
and can be reused in the process. Refractory brick reuse can save Keystone
$135,000 in disposal cost and an additional $360,000 in savings by additive
replacement. To crush and process the brick will cost a little more
than $110,000 a year.
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