Vol. 99, No.
3 FIFTY YEARS OF PROGRESS IN ELECTROTHERMICS
proprietary complex alloys for special purposes, and exother-
mic alloys. These latter are combinations of ferro-alloys with
oxidizing agents and silicon which, when added to molten
steel, develop enough energy to melt themselves. They are
employed as ladle additions and effect an alloying addition
without temperature loss.
No r~sum6 of the ferro-alloy and carbide industries would
Electric Furnaces in the Iron and Steel Industry
H. S. Newhall*
As early as 1800, the carbon arc was used by Sir Humphrey
Davy. This work, of course, was very primitive but did bring
about the beginning of useful application of the electric arc to
industry.
Not much further work was done until approximately 1876
when Sir William Siemens constructed some small furnaces
using both the direct and indirect arc principle. Electric
power at that time was limited and, consequently, the de-
velopment of the electric furnace was quite slow.
Before the turn of the century, however, considerable work
had been done in the development of electric furnaces for
aluminum, calcium carbide, ferroalloys, silicon carbide, and
graphite. Both Heroult in France and Hall in the United
States developed processes for the production of aluminum,
ferroalloys, and steel melting.
In 1899 the first direct arc furnace, designed by Heroult,
was installed, and in 1900 the first shipment of steel was made
from the plant using this furnace. In the next few years, the
greatest development in electric furnaces was carried on
abroad with most of these furnaces using the bottom contact
principle.
In the United States the first arc furnace was installed by
Heroult at the Halcomb Steel Company in Syracuse, New
York, in 1906. This was a single-phase, two-electrode, rec-
tangular furnace of four tons capacity. Soon after this, other
furnaces of rather limited, tonnage were installed at the var-
ious steel plants in the United States. It is interesting to note
that the first furnaces operated on steel for ingots. Not until
1911 was there an electric furnace installed for the production
of steel castings.
This is ironical in that the steel casting industry took much
greater advantage of the electric furnace in the following thirty
years, and during that time the electric steel casting furnace
was by far the most prominent and important part of the
electric furnace industry. It was not until the second World
War that the electric furnace for steel ingots became of para-
mount importance and, at the present time, the greatest
capacity of electric furnaces is going into steel ingots, making
the casting industry decidedly secondary in tons produced.
The earlier furnaces were very crude, designed with the
simplest means of mechanical operation, selecting one or two
voltages, carbon electrodes, door charged, and with various
electrical connections that even astound the electrical en-
gineers of today. A most common design on the earlier fur-
naces included two electrodes with a live bottom;in addition,
of course, three electrodes with or without a bottom connec-
tion were used and so were two electrodes single-phase. There
are still today a few of these older furnaces in operation.
* Pittsburgh Lectromelt Furnace Corporation, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania.
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63C
be complete without reference to the pioneers who made im-
portant technical contributions to its growth during its early
beginnings in the first decade of the century. These men in-
clude Frederick M. Becket, George Cox, Emile Darte, M. Du
Chalmot, Franz van Kugelgen, James G. Marshall, James
T. Morehead, Edgar F. Price, August Rossi, Byranji Saklata-
walla, Frank J. Tone, and Robert Turnbull.
Furnaces were powered with very small transformers, and a
heat of steel took from eight to twelve hours to produce.
Along with this development in the arc furnace there was a
parallel development in the induction furnace. Here again, the
induction furnace had its beginning during the nineteenth
century. This was first patented by Feranti in Italy in 1877,
and in the year 1900 Kjellin designed and operated a single
ring furnace in Sweden. Very shortly after this, developments
in Germany included more than one ring.
Many unsuccessful operations were carried out between
this time and the first World War. Actually, on April 25,
1906, the first heat was rolled and finished into saws from an
induction furnace. This is probably the first successful opera-
tion of induction furnaces. The greatest development in in-
duction furnaces came when the Ajax Northrup Company
developed their high frequency induction furnace, which is
still one of the leading induction furnaces.
There have been many other furnaces designed, including
resistor furnaces, low frequency induction furnaces, single-
electrode arc furnaces, and many others that have all had
their try at replacing the present day arc and induction fur-
naces. However, all of these have dropped by the wayside
except in a few isolated instances. For example, the single-
electrode, live bottom electric furnace is still used on certain
high temperature ferroalloy operations.
This paper is not intended to cover electric furnaces in
general but is only to discuss electric furnaces in the steel
industry. The best way to cover the history of the electric
arc furnace since the first World War is to take the develop-
ments and improvements that have been brought forth during
these years.
The first step was to increase the powering in the trans-
former. Whereas the old furnace operated at around 20 to 25
kw/ft 2 of hearth area, the modern furnace operates at from
75 to 150 kw/ft 2 of hearth area, which enables the melter of
today to melt down his charge at a fairly rapid rate. De-
pending upon the size of furnace, the powering, the quality
of the steel, and the nature of the charge, the heat time may
last from one and one-half hours to five hours or more.
The second most important development in the early stages
was the use of multi-voltage transformers. At first, 90 and
100 volts was considered to be a very good operating range
but, as furnaces became larger, higher voltages became neces-
sary and operators found that two different ranges of volt-
ages were desirable for melting and refining. It was discovered
that the conditions giving the best results, that is, high volt-
age and high power for melting and low voltage and low power
for refining, could be met quite well by connecting the primary
of the three-phase transformers in delta for melting and in
star for refining. This gave greatly improved conditions for
both operations.
 64C JOURNAL OF THE ELECTROCHEMICAL
The first electrodes Chat were used were of carbon. As the
years passed, a graphitized electrode was developed which
would carry higher amperage. This was more expensive but it
was found that the lower cost carbon electrodes were so phy-
sically large that the flash from these arcs harmed the side-
walls, and costs of refractories were higher. With the graph-
ite electrode it was possible to group these electrodes closer
and bring the are physically nearer to the center of the fur-
nace, thus cutting down on the arc blaze on the sidewalls.
This resulted in longer refractory life, less cost of refractories,
and considerable improvements in the economies of steel-
melting.
Along with these developments came other minor develop-
ments such as water-cooled doors in place of brick-lined doors,
water-cooled roof rings, cooling glands to help keep down elec-
trode consumption, water-cooled electrode clamp shoes, to-
gether with water-cooled connections to bring the power to
the damp.
As these developments were all brought forward it became
obvious that the electric furnace had become a production
tool and as such the accounting department was brought
in to study this equipment. The immediate reaction was that
furnaces were shut down too much. During this shutdown
time, the cost of labor and overhead carried on. This forced
the electric furnace manufacturers to design ways and means
of increasing the load factor.
Through this was developed the top charge furnace. Hand
charging of furnaces took from a half-hour to several hours,
depending on the size involved, during which time the fur-
nace was standing idle and losing heat. Companies were pay-
ing demand charges on their power and, by the use of top
charging, the recharging time was cut down to from five to
ten minutes.
This development was accomplished quite readily but the
accounting department still insisted that the furnace was shut
down too much. Studying the problem, it was decided that
time could be saved by the use of power-operated electrode
clamps in order to cut down the time for slipping and adding
electrodes. Today, practically all furnaces built have this
feature. These clamps may be spring-held air release, or air-
held air release.
The accountants at that time were becoming fairly happy
but a condition developed which changed their point of view.
Scrap had become light to a point where it was impossible to
charge the furnace with one charging bucket. In order to meet
this, the furnace manufacturer had to increase the height of
the side-plates of his furnace and, as time went on, the fur-
naees got considerably higher in order to increase the volu-
metric capacity for scrap. With conditions as they exist today,
side-plates may have to go still higher.
As the furnace manufacturer has had to be more strict in
his design, he has also made his specifications to the electrical
companies more strict. Specially designed transformers are
now used which are very heavily braced to stand the sudden
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SOCIETY March 1952
shocks involved in melting steel scrap. Motor-operated tap
changers now are available so that a minimum of time is used
to change from one voltage to another.
The regulator, which was always the bane of the electri-
cian's existence, has now been replaced by one which has con-
siderably less maintenance and, in general, is always accurate.
The old style regulators constantly had to be adjusted and
high maintenance cost was involved in platinum-irridium
contacts.
Circuit breakers, although still not specifically designed for
furnace work, are much more adaptable to electric furnace
operations. The older circuit breaker, which was normally
designed for power transmission lines, was expected to have
four or five breaks in a month, whereas an are furnace breaker
is opened and closed a hundred times a day. This put a very
heavy strain on the older style breakers and it was not un-
common, many years ago, for breakers to burn out, mainly
due to poor maintenance. The present-day breaker, although
it still has to be maintained like any other piece of equipment,
is designed to withstand these shocks and operate without
high maintenance.
The accounting departments are still scratching their heads
trying to figure a way to force the American manufacturer to
put in under-load tap changers. Actually, at the present time,
this is used considerably in Europe but has not found favor
in the United States. Here again it is believed the accounting
department will eventually win out.
The history of the electric arc furnace in the steel industry
is not complete without a short discussion on electric furnaces
for the reduction of iron ores. Here in the United States, where
coke is inexpensive, the blast furnace has become the standard
pig iron production unit.
In countries like Norway, Sweden, Italy, and Switzerland,
where no proper blast furnace coke is available and inexpen-
sive power can be generated from the mountain streams, elec-
tric smelting of iron ores is carried out to a considerable ex-
tent.
Originally, electric pig iron furnaces of 20 and 30 tons daily
capacity were in operation. Soon after the second World
War furnaces of 50 tons were more or less standard. Today
100 ton furnaces, that is, those eapabIe of tapping 100 tons of
pig iron in 24 hours, are considered to be obsolete and fur-
hates of 150 tons to 200 tons per day are in the making.
As these units develop in size, it may be possible that cer:
tain areas in the United States can and will use electric fur-
nace reduction units to furnish a supply of pig iron to the
smaller steel plants.
The induction furnace has had a parallel development until
today the induction furnace is a highly efficient piece of ma-
chinery. As this paper is to cover are furnace development,
it does not seem necessary to go into any great detail with
regard to induction furnaces. However, they have their place
in industry and will, in the future, be used in their special
applications.