Steel Production for Rail in the UK

[Bryson]

Hi Bryson,

This is such a detailed diagram showing the process of manufacturing rail steel. I'd very much like to learn more about this process, do you have any recommendations (link, websites, publications) where I can learn more about this? Thanks.

The diagram came from the American Iron and Steel Institute:

Steel Production - American Iron and Steel Institute

Steel production resources available to view: Steel Wheel, Where Steel Is Made, How Steel Is Made, Steel Glossary, and a link to Outside Processors.

www.steel.org

It's not exhaustive but it shows the basic processes. One particular point to make is that rolling mills come in many different designs. The mill layouts and rolling sequence at Scunthorpe, Hayange, Rocky Mountain (EVRAZ) and Voestalpine - to name a few, are all very different but can produce the same end product to the same international standard.

 

[Trainbike46]

This Summer NR placed a trial order for EAF produced Steel Rails, according to this article: https://www.railwaygazette.com/uk/network-rail-orders-trial-batch-of-green-steel-rails/64794.article#:~:text=The supplier's Ascoval plant near,rolled into rail at Hayange.


The article did state it was a single order purely to evaluate the steel at that stage. The plant in question is near Valenciennes, using scrap rail from Hayange:

So it is technically possible to produce a suitable product from EAF techniques. Presumably there are trade-offs against conventionally produced rail in how it performs under various conditions, but it would not be an impossibility to source the majority of rails needed by the GB rail network from EAFs located in GB.

Gareth Dennis appears to have a slightly more negative view: https://twitter.com/GarethDennis/status/1725649814212194391

Electric arc furnaces are not hot enough to melt and create virgin steel which is required for high grade uses like rail. Whilst further testing is being done with electric arc-produced rails, so far results haven't been promising.

However, based on this thread it appears as though any challenges with using EAF steel for rail should be solvable - it sounds like a glass half-full / half-empty situation

 

[Taunton]

We do seem to have gone through the Electric Arc cycle before, there were a number built in the UK in the 1970s, which didn't last (sometimes known as 'Mini-Mills'). One was at Bidston in The Wirral, built on the land where the old Great Central loco shed once was. I think it lasted about 20 years.

Regarding contaminated steel from scrap, I had some experience of that from pipe we had, being built into a chemical process plant. The pipe had been imported from Italy. We sent the steel away for analysis, it came back outside specification for various contaminants, principally other metals such as zinc or tin. We were advised that it had come from a scrap recycling process that didn't care to separate this, which is apparently possible but adds a cost.

One still sees enormous piles of scrap on some docksides, such as along The Thames, seemingly from domestic appliance and car shredding scrappers etc, which is apparently exported to places like Spain.

For UK railways, one would think that the vast majority of new requirement can be covered by what is recovered, as the overall rail length in use remains pretty much the same, in fact as time goes on it is probably reduced with rationalisation. Just gathering up all the offcuts left behind by the civils after work (a universal problem, but GWML especially I am looking at your ballast) can probably cover several years of requirements .

 

[hwl]

We do seem to have gone through the Electric Arc cycle before, there were a number built in the UK in the 1970s, which didn't last (sometimes known as 'Mini-Mills'). One was at Bidston in The Wirral, built on the land where the old Great Central loco shed once was. I think it lasted about 20 years.

Regarding contaminated steel from scrap, I had some experience of that from pipe we had, being built into a chemical process plant. The pipe had been imported from Italy. We sent the steel away for analysis, it came back outside specification for various contaminants, principally other metals such as zinc or tin. We were advised that it had come from a scrap recycling process that didn't care to separate this, which is apparently possible but adds a cost.

One still sees enormous piles of scrap on some docksides, such as along The Thames, seemingly from domestic appliance and car shredding scrappers etc, which is apparently exported to places like Spain.

For UK railways, one would think that the vast majority of new requirement can be covered by what is recovered, as the overall rail length in use remains pretty much the same, in fact as time goes on it is probably reduced with rationalisation. Just gathering up all the offcuts left behind by the civils after work (a universal problem, but GWML especially I am looking at your ballast) can probably cover several years of requirements .

Previously they were in competition with British Steel or were speciality or Stainless hence no surprises they didn't have a long life in many cases.

Most contaminants apart from Copper and Sulphur can easily be removed for a small cost.
Finely shredding then magnetically sorting really helps improve scrap quality.

Over 96% of rail recycling by mass should be do-able in closed loop recycling.


As I pointed out earlier in this thread we have exported more scrap steel annually for many years than we make /have made annually in blast furnaces. No shortage of scrap!

Traditionally the UK was very anti EAF with the government pretty unhelpful until about 7-8 years ago and huge amounts of scrap is still exported to other European countries such as Italy they have been more pro-EAF. Up until the early 1970's the government (like many other governments) still viewed investing in massive excess Blast furnace capacity to be a large steel exported and create jobs as a key policy. The problems is that all large steel producers couldn't do the same thing and this came to an end when China and India became more the self sufficient.
It is worth pointing out that annual UK scrap steel exports (mostly for EAF in other countries e.g. Italy) are larger than UK blast furnace / BOS steel output and this has been the case for decades but governments (DTI/BEIS etc.) have been very anti EAF in UK for decades with several EAF plants closing and many other barely operating.
Developed economies require comparatively little additional steel annually on net basis once recycling is take into account.

Turkey , India and Germany are all currently big buyers of scrap steel from the UK (for both BOS and EAF) so availability of lower carbon intensity scrap (compared to virgin materials) for those countries is going to decline somewhat in the short to medium term as well.
There is also a reasonable probability that steel trade balance (for steel not already built into products) will improve once we get the internal scrap steel logistic properly set up for everything being EAF.
Not good news for Newport Docks etc.

 

[Bryson]

I frequently see this statement that electric arc is not hot enough compared to blast furnaces. Its rubbish. Arc furnaces actually run hotter than blast furnaces but this is irrelevant as the two processes have different purposes.

Blast furnaces convert iron oxide ore to a high carbon liquid pig iron (with a relatively low melting point)which is then converted to low carbon steel by a second process, for example the basic oxygen process. The resulting melt can then be cast into billets for rolling.

This is primary steel making, its as much of a chemical process as physical.

Arc furnaces take cold steel charges and re-melt it so that the composition can be adjusted by dissolution of other metals or by diluting with purer feed stocks. Again, the resulting melt can then be cast into new products or billets for rolling.

Plenty of rail is produced around the world from Arc melted steel, does anyone really think that British Steel is planning to give up one of their key markets?