EF dust busters are in an expansionary frame of mind

Aug 21, 2008 | 12:20 PM |

Competition is picking up in the electric-arc furnace (EF) zinc dust recovery business. The frontrunner in the industry, Monaca, Pa.-based Horsehead Corp., scored a coup late last year, when it signed a long-term agreement to handle all of the baghouse dust from Nucor Corp.'s three steel mills in the Carolinas its Darlington, S.C., bar mill; its Berkeley County sheet mill; and the Nucor Steel-Hertford plate mill in Cofield, N.C. (AMM, Dec. 27).

Horsehead, which gathers spent zinc dust from mini-mill melt shops and skimmings and drosses from hot-dip galvanizers to refine into reusable zinc oxides and Prime Western Grade zinc metal, plans to build new regional EF dust recycling facilities near Nucor's Carolina steel mills and have them on-stream by 2009.

Horsehead now has four facilities that handle baghouse dust its Palmerton, Pa., plant north of Allentown in eastern Pennsylvania, a plant in Chicago, another in Rockwood, Tenn., and a fourth in Beaumont, Texas. It started up a second Waelz kiln at its Rockwood plant late last year, doubling the EF dust-processing capacity there.....