Yup in the kiloamps range will do that from the magnetic fields. The biggest one of these I've seen was in Tennessee for a phosphorus plant. It legit had 120kV high tension feeders going to it feeding a transformer that dropped it to 45k at lots of current. It was fed with phosphate ore, sand, coke, and sodium carbonate. You ended up with CO, phosphorus vapor, slag made of sodium calcium silicate glass, and some bizarre iron phosphorus alloy. Care had to be done with how much coke is added, too little and you get a phosphate glass, too much and you get silicon carbide crystals that short out the arc furnace and have to be manually removed.
Thanks for answering my question guys. funny story, I once had to weld something just out of reach of the 220v welder's cord. I'm no electrician... I attempted to make an extension cord out of 110 Romex. I found a box and measured 2 legs, both around 120v to ground. I couldn't find the breaker to kill the circuit.... fast forward a couple minutes, I got black and white added into the box. I was really careful and the screws were tight again. Then I went to do the ground, the screw fell out of position. I reached in with some diagonal cutters and grabbed the screw but I touched juice to ground in the process. There was a bright flash for a split second and then I felt the voltage hum through the handles of the cutters. I was only separated by a thin rubber coating on the handles, it must've been in good shape. I couldn't pull the pliers away either.. then I heard a loud pop somewhere else in the shop and everything stopped. A real electrician was called to get the lights back on. He found 3 time delay fuses, all blown in the same box. He said I blew all the fuses across all 3 phases. He looked me dead in the eye and said "You gotta be more careful man." I'll never forget that, I refuse to mess with anything over 220. no 3 phase, I won't do it hahahaha
I visited a much larger version of this in Pocatello back in the 90’s, while working as an engineer. I actually had to go inside one to do some inspection work. Very spooky to go inside one of these and see the graphite electrodes taller than a man, rows of them lined out in an oven the size of large grocery store, and you realize the immense amount of current that runs across these to melt rock, and you pray like hell somebody doesn’t engage the switching blocks.
I was an electric furnace operator for a mineral insulation manufacturer, it melted rocks and the electrodes were giant graphite rods, basically pencils, we would zero them in on a pile and turn on the electric current and it turn the rock and dirt into molten lava.
“Alright fellas! Gather around! I just got the electric bill and it’s f*cking ridiculous! I’m constantly going around and turning lights off in this place!”
You sound like someone I know. Meanwhile the lights are like 20 watt efficiency bulbs that probably only add $2 per bulb per month if they were run 24/7
There's something particularly creepy about both how vibrantly colorful the fire is, and how sullenly gray the machine is. The contrast makes it appear surreal.
As an artist I love it. The contrast, the monochrome pallet, the colour of fire, the round and soft smoke lines and sharp and straight lines of the machine. I have no idea what is this thing and TH-cam just randomly give it to me but I love the image of it lol
@@eg-drawidk much either but from what i know: its a giant furnace used to melt giant amount of metal. they use giant amounts of electrical power, so its pretty much a giant taser but for melting metal. its crazy, its loud, its dangerous, but the world apparently needs machines like this to stay running. one of these furnaces can use the power of an entire city.
@@TheDisgruntledMechanic99 I work in a motor shop ,but I'm a gen tech 😂 Anyway,they been around since 1932 and got some neat old literature. If you had a farm out in Millbrook NY in the late 30s and wanted to run a 1hp motor or larger ,you had to call the power company in Poughkeepsie and warn them(10mi away) And you also had to call them on shutdown. Haha or blow everyones lights out in town 😂😂
@@MrTheHillfolk that’s crazy 😂 we have a 5 story tall electric arc furnace used for melting Carbide, the power company calls us and tells us to shut it off for certain amounts of time because it can’t power us and Louisville Kentucky at the same time 😂😅
Seen this happen at a factory behind my backyard when one crashed into another containing a transformer and it did that especially, it burnt a small crater crater into the ground because they couldn't turn it off fast enough. Didn't know these existed.
I work in a hospital and worked on three guys who were cleaning out a molten metal blast furnace when it was accidentally turned on they managed to get out before the door shut while the molten metal starting pouring into the furnace ,they were only in their a matter of seconds ,one did not survive because of of his burns the other two were transported to a specialist burns unit ,I can remember seeing them in the accident and emergency department they literally had holes clean through their legs and arms from molten metal and severe flash burns to their faces and hands most of their clothes had literally burnt of them but had survived enough to save their lives from further burns ,when it goes wrong ,it goes wrong quickly and with dire and fatal consequences.
There should be safety protocol and lock-out procedures for any work being done like that. Obviously these protocols were not followed-should have been no way it should have been able to have been turned on accidentally. Very terrible and irresponsible.
Nasty - In our facility, the story goes that one of the exterior water cooled panels had to be isolated due to leaks. This requires shutting off the inlet water and leaving the exit valve open to prevent pressure build-up. Someone closed both. A worker was around the area when it exploded, taking the worker's life and his head.
notice the magnetic fields in the cables on the right. When the current is on, it makes them dance around. Those are some serious stiff-ass cables too.
Yep, I’m an offshore electromechanic. Regularly working with wire sections of 250sqmm. Used to work for a company that did maintenenace and repairs on industrial machinery, including rewinding and repairing motors. I remember using a utility bar and a large pair of Knipex cobra’s to make the slightest bends in these copper cables 💀 And these were just cables for electric motors (ranging up to 20 tons, but 1000kW and 3ton was quite a common one.)
Luxembourg didn't give a shid! Steel was more important than providing electricity for the pleb. Then again it taught me to live without electricity. Recently there have been issues with the grid where I live and I was the only one unbothered, my house was lit with candles within minutes while my neighbours were still frantically running through their houses with their flashlights 😂
@@chubbydinosaur9148 i dont think we did either but because of the draw of power required at the time probably would have destroyed local subtations if the load was too great!😅
I lived about half a mile from Magna. You could hear the buzzing noise from my back garden. I went to visit on a school trip and we had to sign a legal waver saying if we died then it wasnt the fault of the British Steel Corporation. I literally stood about the same distance away from the crucible as this guy is standing but on an overhead gantry and the crucible was huge. When they popped the lid on then the carbon rods descended into it the noise was incredible. The cables were girating like demented spirits from the underworld. Two Twin brothers from my school went bird egging and found a nest on top of the 33,000V cables feeding the factory. They climbed over a security fence into a no mans land to get to the cables to retreive the eggs. They left with 80% burns to their flesh. Ouch!
That looks like start up. After it is going good there is much less popping just a steady arcing sound. Those cables were rather tame. Ours back in the 70's were larger and did a lot more moving. The carbon electrodes were about 10 inches in diameter. The smoke was not a problem as it is all collected and scrubbed before being released to the outside. Much easier to clean than the output from coke fired furnaces that had been used for many decades before the electric arc furnace was popular.
Blast furnaces use coke to produce iron. Steelmaking has used Bessemer converters, open hearth furnaces, fueled by byproducts of the cokemaking process, Basic Oxygen furnaces, and electric arc furnaces.
@@spaceflight1019 you're not wrong but coke fired furnaces where used for smelting in the past. source: i worked in a 100+ year old foundry that once had one
I can hear the low humming vibration in the video! I live in an industrial suburb on the West Coast of the US several miles from what was a massive steel finishing plant that recently closed down. While it only had furnaces for it's annealing operations and hot dipping lines as it no longer made new steel from scratch, the plant's 2 annealing furnaces were massive and required temperatures of over 1700° F. I could often hear a very deep, quevering oscillating humming noise all over town, especially at night but sometimes durring the day, too, and didn't know what it was for most of the time I herd it, and it really bothered me... It could be heard for miles around, even with the windows closed, sometimes even with my earplugs in. It was an annoying and rather spooky sound that I could feel almost as much as hear. Then a few months ago it completely stopped at the exact same time the nearby steel plant shut down!!!
Was apart of a shutdown at Teck trail operations in 2018 and completely rebuilt a massive 3 electrode electric arc furnace. One electrode is over 6 stories tall and consists of 3 parts that get screwed together to make one, each part weights approx 15 tons. The furnace has its own hydroelectric damn called 7 mile damn on pond orille river in BC Canada to power it. This furnace is tiny comparatively, could fit 6 of these furnaces inside the melting chamber... It was wild and full of lead 😂
The mill in Midland, Pennsylvania had two 75 ton electric arc furnaces. The place is across the river from and directly connected to the nuclear reactors at the Beaver Valley power plant. If you were within 100 feet when the arc first struck it felt like you had been punched in the chest.
LOL formerly Colt Crucible. These were originally 88 ton UHP split-shell furnaces converted to 75 ton solid shells by J&L when they purchased the plant and moved operations there from Warren, MI in about 1982. Later it became J&L Specialty Steel and later Allegheny. They would make a basic steel in this and refine it to chemistry in an AOD prior to using it to feed one strand of a Mannesman Demag slab caster. The electric furnaces started with a mixed charge of scrap steel and alloying elements like ferrochromium and ferromanganese and ferrosilicon, as I recall. These were either 18" or 22" electrodes, as I recall.
@@shevek9946 In early 1983, I was working for WISCO and they sent me there in March to assist in restarting the plant. Fischer-Porter had the caster; we had everything else. We had the melt shop, AOD, and caster running and were working on the wastewater treatment plant and the Z-mill when I was reassigned to a nuclear project in Slovenia. One of the contractors was Eichley. A millwright, Debbie, was a dead ringer for Jennifer Beals, of "Flashdance" fame. 40 years ago...
Finished my apprenticeship at a recycled steel mill, we would use an electric arc furnace to melt the scrap, had an oxygen lance mounted to the front of it. Occasionally the scrap would be wet and there would be a huge explosion of hot metal and dust. the furnace was powered by 33kv to a step down transformer which fed the current through 3 graphite rods. Dirty steel would form at the bottom, slag poured off, and then a bunch of add mixtures put with it and poured through floating moulds to make low grade steel billets to be made into re-enforcing steel.
So loud. So much soot. My dad would take me in to work with him and I had to walk past it to get to his office in the trailer. Exciting. Amazing! So much heat. The guy in the gray suit getting a sample to analyze composition, what a job. Loved it. Thank you. Brought back a wonderful memory
When the furnace first ‘strikes the arc’ it’s like an insane thunderstorm. If the steel being melted consists of heavy pieces of scrap there is also the noise of it being thrown about under the three electrodes.
I work occasionally on the hot side of a stainless steel mill my 2 brothers in-law and a nephew work in an Aluminum mill. Working the hot side of a mill is a most EXCELLENT weight loss program.
Usually the first load of scrap steel - bore down enough for room to add the second load. Then bore down to melt and test sample to determine what elements need to be added to bring the steel to it's specific steel tolerances before pouring into a ladle and to casting for it's final block/billet/I-beam/rebar etc. Used to work for LASCO Steel in Whitby, Ontario, Canada as a Controls Systems Technologist. It was fun.
I was thinking of working at the Gerdau plant in Whitby, do you have any insight on the matter? Edit: Turns out the Gerdau plant IS the old LASCO plant.
@Weeb Destroyah yup, that sounds like the name - I finished there in 1994 and they changed ownership a few years after that ... unfortunately, I did not stay in touch with my workmates and unable to find out the dynamics of the change then. Would be interesting to hear though.
I have a sudden appreciation for the giant heat treat furnaces we have at my plant. Even the odd gas explosion inside the chamber that sounds like someone dropped a ton of bricks from the ceiling sounds like a day at the beach compared to that thing 😳
Seeing those massive cables being held in place by nothing than the sheer current running through them was something very unique and horrifying in a way
There's a big pot inside that thing that's lined with refractory material (think firebricks) and is used for smelting metals and other compounds that require extreme heat, in the top of the pot there are gigantic graphite/carbon rods that get dipped down onto the pile of material inside to strike an arc, much like a big welder. The arc them melts the metal/material being smelted by the extreme heat of the arc. Those cables you see on the right side are the power cables that feed the carbon rods, there is so much power running through them that they create magnetic fields that repel against each other, which is why you see them moving and wiggling with irregular movements. One of these units draws enough electricity to power several hundred (if not more) homes, these facilities routinely pay one million dollars or more for their monthly power bill. But this is how we get cheap steel, there's no better process for steel refining.
@@TheExplosiveGuy Many steelmaking plants have deals with the power company to only run between 10 pm and 6 AM. Homestead Works had 11 open hearth furnaces. Each one was the size of a swimming pool, and was capable of producing 375 tons of steel every 4 to 6 hours. Basic Oxygen furnaces and electric arc furnaces take 45 minutes to make a heat. The electrics I worked on were 75 ton each and the basic Oxygen furnaces at Edgar Thompson Works are 180 tons apiece.
@@spaceflight1019 it's pretty phenomenal how much these plants have scaled up over the years, the amount of steel that can be smelted in one batch is insane, 375 tons, my god man. I used to work for a company that refurbished the ladles used at the Nucor steel foundry in WA state, we had to have a piece of equipment normally used for picking up 30 foot tall 100+ ton piles of logs just to move and manipulate the things, they were about 30 feet tall and 14 feet wide and weighed 48,000 pounds empty, it's hard to comprehend something that large being filled with molten steel nearly to the top, day in and day out.
Atlas Foundry in Tacoma, WA has bigger electric arc furnace, but it doesn't leak as much excitement. When I worked there 35 years ago the did almost exclusively stainless steel. A 14'x14'x12' sand mold ready for casting dropped when a chain swivel link broke one night when I was on shift. No one on had to call the front office a block away to tell them a mold dropped. That was about 3mo work down the tubes.
As an electrician I DREAM of seeing one of these in action in person one day, the flash bursting out the vent, the cables thrashing under the sheer amount of current, God aren't arc furnaces beautiful??
Cute little EAF here. Ours is 3x this size. Holds 160tons of liquid steel. Our EAF uses the same amount of electricity in a day as the entire city around it does. Sometimes our EAF has to be shut down so the city has more power.
I used to work as a service engineer visiting steelworks to repair and maintain the equipment used In the control rooms adjacent to furnaces like this. The whole floor of the building would shake and sparks and fumes would fly everywhere as the melt started , if this happened in any other industrial scenario, it would be considered a major catastrophic incident!
I repaired some cooling lines on the head of an old “Lectromelt” furnace way back in the 90’s and they let me hang around to watch it in operation. Hell on earth is exactly how I’d describe what I saw; it was loud, violent, tons of smoke, I could just imagine the devil rising out of it all…
Pretty impressive to watch and hear. Thanks for sharing. Looks like the furnace could use a range hood with water spray scrubbers. Hopefully the steel beams above don’t get weakened by the heat.
Aluminium smelter in the town I work in in the Scottish Highlands and the smelter uses about 5x more power than the whole town. Granted fortwilliam isn't a big place but alot of juice for possibly the smallest Aluminium smelter in the world haha
I worked for Nucor Steel and they used electric arc furnaces. They weren’t this chaotic however… unless a live artillery round accidentally ended up in the scrap.
@@taliakuznetsova7092 Not at all. Occasionally (maybe once every couple of months) the entire building would shake and you’d hear a muffled concussion. The first time I heard it, I asked someone and they calmly said, “Oh, it’s just an artillery round that the army depot didn’t remove the explosive charge from. Happens every now and then.” 😬
@@taliakuznetsova7092 Melted steel is quite viscous yet still plastic, so I assume it contained most of the pressure of the explosion and then the concussion propagated through it to the furnace and then outward from there acoustically.
Rodalco has a couple of videos of an EAF - he shows the meters while it is running - insane to see the voltage of the 100kv+ supply (via pylons) jump about with the load.
Worked in Batch and furnace of a glass factory for years, we used DC in the melter 24/7 in addition to the top fired gas. You could easily see when the DC system was getting serviced just by the viscosity and clarity differences. Thanks for the cool show 👍
@@embersaffron5522 Indeed! When one of these furnaces (only one) runs the entire country notices because it *literally* causes a dip in the finances and the goverment is informed that it will be running so be prepaired for the finantial setback. In some instances one run of this furnace costs 2-3 figure millions. This is no joke. The grid is also informed prior to running course. Ofcourse if a country is producing more than enough electricity then its fine but information is shared.
Those electrodes can dump tens of MegaWatts in to that oven, if you look carefull you'll notice sometimes those cables suddenly jump. That's when current spikes due to uneven distribution of material in the steel soup.
Wow! I never knew such a gigantic powerful machine existed & it looked terrifying and horrifying yet exhilarating to watch! Thank you! Edit: I've since learnt that this is a baby, as there's behemoths in massive scale compared to this!
@@TheMrMused Hey yes, as thus is my first introduction to them & reading the comments has also enlightened me to the existance of much larger ones! The thought boggles my mind & it looks like I'd better search for some vids on the monster versions to really blow my mind?!
I worked in a melt shop a lot like this one for many years and watching the furnace never got old. It was the brightest light and loudest noise I ever experienced. My first apartment was over a mile away and I could hear it running from there.
The ones I've seen 3 carbon electrodes maybe a couple feet in diameter. That was at a Nucor Yamata mill in blythville ar. I used to work in a John Deere gray iron foundry. All that work is interesting but kinda hot.
You haven't lived until you hear and feel the pulse shockwaves of the current when the rods are engaged. Had the opportunity to be in the veiwing area of one of these procedures. It was like Zues himself letting all the fury of his lightning loose on the melting pot in the forge. The only thing close to it for me was standing 6 feet away from a nitrofuel dragster opening up full throttle one time. God like level sounds,I dont know how the guys working this machine do it every day. You all are on a whole different level of career than I thought was possible,I thought I knew Fire.... Got mad respect for the people that run these machines....
Sounds exactly like my '65 GTO V8 - 389 tri-power after i rebuilt the engine. I had 2 spark plug wires reversed! The engine ran, but lokked and sounded just like this!
There's one here in Brazil they had to built an entire dam and hydro power facility only to operate a few of those blast furnaces. Imagine consuming the entire electrical power on the power grid LMAO
Many years i worked likes a refractory linning specialist. EAF is heart of steelplant and everyone can hear it 😊 But much bigger are convertors, ok, they used for another type of steel, but they can be huge 😮
The electric arc furnace method is also used to smelt silicon from quartz ore. The ore is mixed with coal & in some cases charcoal made from wood. The produced silicon is used to make eldctronics, silicon based products, and solar panels.
This thing looks like it's straight from an Aliens movies. Like a plot device kinda thing. The comments from people that have worked around these massive machines have really added to what they can do!
Nice! There is a Nucor facility fairly close to where I live. Been considering signing on just for the experience of working in the industry. Hot, dangerous and dirty is what I hear, but generously rewarded.
Any particular reason or are you just trolling? Guessing you could find that answer with about 5 minutes of internet research and a little bit of napkin math....
@@alienspacebones I just donated my 1991 Ford Explorer Hearse to a charity It still started with 1 crank and ran super smooth. Original engine and transmission. Ran and rode like a dream. 32 years old They don't build them like that anymore I had an 89 E-150 that was just as good. 250,000 miles, original engine and transmission I hit 3 concrete poles head on 1 winter and only pushed the bumper back a little I had a 5 mile per hour bump in a parking spot and it crunched the entire rear quarter on my 2011 Sienna I was horrified how it collapsed like a soda can 3800 to repair the damage I hope I never have a head-on crash in the new vehicles I won't survive
@@ocsrc You know if I owned a hearse I don't think I could part with it. 😁 I drove a little Kia econo-box for a few years, then got my first kind of real truck. Lifted Nissan Titan with a 3" exhaust. I'm so used to having that much steel wrapped around me and sitting high enough I can see what's going on far ahead, I can't go back to driving little cars. Plus I tow and that's just not happening with where the batteries are. I live in a state that's mandating EV with little infrastructure in place to support it. Not going to go well.
Quite normal. You have three independently operated electrodes connected to each electrical phase off the utility. They are lowered into the furnace which is loaded with a whole bunch of scrap steel until they arc to the steel. They are then moved up and down to maintain that arc within certain current limits, and the heat of all that plasma from the arcs melts the steel very quickly. Most of that smoke is from paint and the carbon electrodes burning off. What is crazy is you see those hose looking things that are moving? Those are water-jacketed cables that are 6-8" thick. They are swinging like that not because of the motion of the electrodes, but because of the magnetic fields from the intense current of thousands of amps. That much current can melt an entire ladle of steel in about 15 minutes, and it usually takes another charge or two to get get enough molten steel to fill a ladle to move to the caster.
the electric arc funace at evraz rocky mountain steel costs about a million dollars per day, directly connected to commanche power plant behind the steel mill, and uses enough power in 24 hours to supply the city of pueblo colorado( where the mill is located) for an entire year
The day plant layout occured, the powers that be decided let's just put the ten billion megajoule output flame right under the structural celing beams. Yes William, great idea, we will put that right under there. perfect!!!
You know they’re running some world ending current when you see the cables moving around.
Are those cords really moving because of the load being put on them? If so that's fckin insane.
@@171apples171 Word
Yup in the kiloamps range will do that from the magnetic fields. The biggest one of these I've seen was in Tennessee for a phosphorus plant. It legit had 120kV high tension feeders going to it feeding a transformer that dropped it to 45k at lots of current. It was fed with phosphate ore, sand, coke, and sodium carbonate. You ended up with CO, phosphorus vapor, slag made of sodium calcium silicate glass, and some bizarre iron phosphorus alloy. Care had to be done with how much coke is added, too little and you get a phosphate glass, too much and you get silicon carbide crystals that short out the arc furnace and have to be manually removed.
Those cables are water cooled .
Thanks for answering my question guys. funny story, I once had to weld something just out of reach of the 220v welder's cord. I'm no electrician... I attempted to make an extension cord out of 110 Romex. I found a box and measured 2 legs, both around 120v to ground. I couldn't find the breaker to kill the circuit.... fast forward a couple minutes, I got black and white added into the box. I was really careful and the screws were tight again. Then I went to do the ground, the screw fell out of position. I reached in with some diagonal cutters and grabbed the screw but I touched juice to ground in the process. There was a bright flash for a split second and then I felt the voltage hum through the handles of the cutters. I was only separated by a thin rubber coating on the handles, it must've been in good shape. I couldn't pull the pliers away either.. then I heard a loud pop somewhere else in the shop and everything stopped. A real electrician was called to get the lights back on. He found 3 time delay fuses, all blown in the same box. He said I blew all the fuses across all 3 phases. He looked me dead in the eye and said "You gotta be more careful man." I'll never forget that, I refuse to mess with anything over 220. no 3 phase, I won't do it hahahaha
I visited a much larger version of this in Pocatello back in the 90’s, while working as an engineer. I actually had to go inside one to do some inspection work. Very spooky to go inside one of these and see the graphite electrodes taller than a man, rows of them lined out in an oven the size of large grocery store, and you realize the immense amount of current that runs across these to melt rock, and you pray like hell somebody doesn’t engage the switching blocks.
Gollum : "Not imagining, NOT Imagining...."
LOTO FTW.
Dude - the CHAMBER was the size of a LARGE grocery store?!?
You might get to be doctor Manhattan.
@@justinklenk Vessel, actually.
I was an electric furnace operator for a mineral insulation manufacturer, it melted rocks and the electrodes were giant graphite rods, basically pencils, we would zero them in on a pile and turn on the electric current and it turn the rock and dirt into molten lava.
Incredible!
Interesting but what is the point? What commercial use has lava got?
@@normturner4849 I would imagine you melt away the rock and what’s left is the valuable mineral then you can cool it. Idk I’m stoned lol
@@normturner4849 they spin it into insulation, rockwoll.
Carbide?
“Alright fellas! Gather around! I just got the electric bill and it’s f*cking ridiculous! I’m constantly going around and turning lights off in this place!”
You sound like someone I know. Meanwhile the lights are like 20 watt efficiency bulbs that probably only add $2 per bulb per month if they were run 24/7
@@geometricart7851 $1.58 per month at 11 cents per kilowatt.
Lights are even more efficient now as they are all LED
😂
🤣🤣
There's something particularly creepy about both how vibrantly colorful the fire is, and how sullenly gray the machine is. The contrast makes it appear surreal.
It is very Wagnerian - "Twilight Of the Gods"-type stuff
As an artist I love it. The contrast, the monochrome pallet, the colour of fire, the round and soft smoke lines and sharp and straight lines of the machine.
I have no idea what is this thing and TH-cam just randomly give it to me but I love the image of it lol
Absolutely true
Blade runner-esque
@@eg-drawidk much either but from what i know:
its a giant furnace used to melt giant amount of metal. they use giant amounts of electrical power, so its pretty much a giant taser but for melting metal. its crazy, its loud, its dangerous, but the world apparently needs machines like this to stay running. one of these furnaces can use the power of an entire city.
"I have no idea why we stopped"
maintenance guy in the break room making microwave popcorn
Bro we literally have to shut ours off to let the city have power
@@TheDisgruntledMechanic99 I work in a motor shop ,but I'm a gen tech 😂
Anyway,they been around since 1932 and got some neat old literature.
If you had a farm out in Millbrook NY in the late 30s and wanted to run a 1hp motor or larger ,you had to call the power company in Poughkeepsie and warn them(10mi away)
And you also had to call them on shutdown.
Haha or blow everyones lights out in town 😂😂
@@MrTheHillfolk that’s crazy 😂 we have a 5 story tall electric arc furnace used for melting Carbide, the power company calls us and tells us to shut it off for certain amounts of time because it can’t power us and Louisville Kentucky at the same time 😂😅
Oh course the maintenance guy blew the breaker! 😂
Someone popped the breaker, can't run the microwave and furnace at the same time 😂
It's like welding with telephone poles. Incredible
Seen this happen at a factory behind my backyard when one crashed into another containing a transformer and it did that especially, it burnt a small crater crater into the ground because they couldn't turn it off fast enough. Didn't know these existed.
LMAOO
Lol
I work in a hospital and worked on three guys who were cleaning out a molten metal blast furnace when it was accidentally turned on they managed to get out before the door shut while the molten metal starting pouring into the furnace ,they were only in their a matter of seconds ,one did not survive because of of his burns the other two were transported to a specialist burns unit ,I can remember seeing them in the accident and emergency department they literally had holes clean through their legs and arms from molten metal and severe flash burns to their faces and hands most of their clothes had literally burnt of them but had survived enough to save their lives from further burns ,when it goes wrong ,it goes wrong quickly and with dire and fatal consequences.
There should be safety protocol and lock-out procedures for any work being done like that. Obviously these protocols were not followed-should have been no way it should have been able to have been turned on accidentally. Very terrible and irresponsible.
@@thelastperfectman4139 that costs too much money apparently
Nasty - In our facility, the story goes that one of the exterior water cooled panels had to be isolated due to leaks. This requires shutting off the inlet water and leaving the exit valve open to prevent pressure build-up. Someone closed both. A worker was around the area when it exploded, taking the worker's life and his head.
@@jazz1on I think police should be hired to secure volt, vans and all the buttons that can put on a machine when there's maintenance.
@@stephanewantou218 I doubt there are many police officers who'd know how to.
It'd need to be someone qualified.
notice the magnetic fields in the cables on the right. When the current is on, it makes them dance around. Those are some serious stiff-ass cables too.
That's what about 50 thousand amperes does! Sick Transformers to hold this huge short circuits!
@@JorgeTheilacker yeah, secondary windings should have interesting cross-section...
Yep, I’m an offshore electromechanic. Regularly working with wire sections of 250sqmm. Used to work for a company that did maintenenace and repairs on industrial machinery, including rewinding and repairing motors. I remember using a utility bar and a large pair of Knipex cobra’s to make the slightest bends in these copper cables 💀
And these were just cables for electric motors (ranging up to 20 tons, but 1000kW and 3ton was quite a common one.)
Apparently the one at magna in the uk was the largest at the time and had to be ran at night as to not kill the power grid (1970's)
At the time at a cost of £1,000,000 was able to peoduce steel at 1/5 the cost of coal and only required a team of 3 instead of 5
Luxembourg didn't give a shid! Steel was more important than providing electricity for the pleb. Then again it taught me to live without electricity. Recently there have been issues with the grid where I live and I was the only one unbothered, my house was lit with candles within minutes while my neighbours were still frantically running through their houses with their flashlights 😂
@@chubbydinosaur9148 i dont think we did either but because of the draw of power required at the time probably would have destroyed local subtations if the load was too great!😅
I lived about half a mile from Magna. You could hear the buzzing noise from my back garden. I went to visit on a school trip and we had to sign a legal waver saying if we died then it wasnt the fault of the British Steel Corporation. I literally stood about the same distance away from the crucible as this guy is standing but on an overhead gantry and the crucible was huge. When they popped the lid on then the carbon rods descended into it the noise was incredible. The cables were girating like demented spirits from the underworld.
Two Twin brothers from my school went bird egging and found a nest on top of the 33,000V cables feeding the factory. They climbed over a security fence into a no mans land to get to the cables to retreive the eggs. They left with 80% burns to their flesh. Ouch!
That looks like start up. After it is going good there is much less popping just a steady arcing sound. Those cables were rather tame. Ours back in the 70's were larger and did a lot more moving. The carbon electrodes were about 10 inches in diameter. The smoke was not a problem as it is all collected and scrubbed before being released to the outside. Much easier to clean than the output from coke fired furnaces that had been used for many decades before the electric arc furnace was popular.
Blast furnaces use coke to produce iron. Steelmaking has used Bessemer converters, open hearth furnaces, fueled by byproducts of the cokemaking process, Basic Oxygen furnaces, and electric arc furnaces.
@@spaceflight1019 you're not wrong but coke fired furnaces where used for smelting in the past. source: i worked in a 100+ year old foundry that once had one
@@BuBoNiCcHrOnIc91 But isn't superior quality steel all produced in a blast furnace using coke and iron ore?
@@goodlife6277
That is seldom thought of now😢CHEAPEST Steel being the only consideration.
@Roger: I was really surprised by the arc instability. Thank you for verifying this was just start-up.
What a video such as this cannot get across is the powerful vibrations that these thing create.
Soup's ready!
You can see it shaking and moving
True heavy metal bass.
It's like being punched in the chest repeatedly until it settles down.
I can hear the low humming vibration in the video! I live in an industrial suburb on the West Coast of the US several miles from what was a massive steel finishing plant that recently closed down. While it only had furnaces for it's annealing operations and hot dipping lines as it no longer made new steel from scratch, the plant's 2 annealing furnaces were massive and required temperatures of over 1700° F. I could often hear a very deep, quevering oscillating humming noise all over town, especially at night but sometimes durring the day, too, and didn't know what it was for most of the time I herd it, and it really bothered me... It could be heard for miles around, even with the windows closed, sometimes even with my earplugs in. It was an annoying and rather spooky sound that I could feel almost as much as hear. Then a few months ago it completely stopped at the exact same time the nearby steel plant shut down!!!
Was apart of a shutdown at Teck trail operations in 2018 and completely rebuilt a massive 3 electrode electric arc furnace. One electrode is over 6 stories tall and consists of 3 parts that get screwed together to make one, each part weights approx 15 tons. The furnace has its own hydroelectric damn called 7 mile damn on pond orille river in BC Canada to power it. This furnace is tiny comparatively, could fit 6 of these furnaces inside the melting chamber... It was wild and full of lead 😂
Insane
Dam*
That smelter is a pretty wild place in general.
full of lead each weighs 15 tonne at 6 stories high. Real Heavy metal plays
Fucking hell that's insane
The mill in Midland, Pennsylvania had two 75 ton electric arc furnaces. The place is across the river from and directly connected to the nuclear reactors at the Beaver Valley power plant. If you were within 100 feet when the arc first struck it felt like you had been punched in the chest.
Is it still in operation?
@@Masterman5010 No. It was J&L Specialty Steel.
@@spaceflight1019 Aw gotcha but nonetheless that plant sounds like a true engineering marvel to break down rocks
LOL formerly Colt Crucible. These were originally 88 ton UHP split-shell furnaces converted to 75 ton solid shells by J&L when they purchased the plant and moved operations there from Warren, MI in about 1982. Later it became J&L Specialty Steel and later Allegheny. They would make a basic steel in this and refine it to chemistry in an AOD prior to using it to feed one strand of a Mannesman Demag slab caster. The electric furnaces started with a mixed charge of scrap steel and alloying elements like ferrochromium and ferromanganese and ferrosilicon, as I recall.
These were either 18" or 22" electrodes, as I recall.
@@shevek9946 In early 1983, I was working for WISCO and they sent me there in March to assist in restarting the plant. Fischer-Porter had the caster; we had everything else. We had the melt shop, AOD, and caster running and were working on the wastewater treatment plant and the Z-mill when I was reassigned to a nuclear project in Slovenia.
One of the contractors was Eichley. A millwright, Debbie, was a dead ringer for Jennifer Beals, of "Flashdance" fame.
40 years ago...
Finished my apprenticeship at a recycled steel mill, we would use an electric arc furnace to melt the scrap, had an oxygen lance mounted to the front of it. Occasionally the scrap would be wet and there would be a huge explosion of hot metal and dust. the furnace was powered by 33kv to a step down transformer which fed the current through 3 graphite rods. Dirty steel would form at the bottom, slag poured off, and then a bunch of add mixtures put with it and poured through floating moulds to make low grade steel billets to be made into
re-enforcing steel.
unsurprisingly recycling never really produces clean("virgin") materials...
That shit can’t be good for your lungs
Thanks Ben
So loud. So much soot. My dad would take me in to work with him and I had to walk past it to get to his office in the trailer. Exciting. Amazing! So much heat. The guy in the gray suit getting a sample to analyze composition, what a job. Loved it. Thank you. Brought back a wonderful memory
When the furnace first ‘strikes the arc’ it’s like an insane thunderstorm. If the steel being melted consists of heavy pieces of scrap there is also the noise of it being thrown about under the three electrodes.
Heavy metal 🤘🏻
It's so cool to imagine we're forging steel from lightning
It’s even better if the scrap is wet. The water instantly vaporises with a good boom!
Rammstein would use this as a stage prop for sure
Or something one would see on the set of a Fritz Lang movie.
Hell yeah like as soon as the first verse comes in the magma just burst in a massive fireball
I work occasionally on the hot side of a stainless steel mill my 2 brothers in-law and a nephew work in an Aluminum mill.
Working the hot side of a mill is a most EXCELLENT weight loss program.
lol,
This was recorded in 1080p HDR. I appreciate the extra quality kind sir 🙏
Usually the first load of scrap steel - bore down enough for room to add the second load. Then bore down to melt and test sample to determine what elements need to be added to bring the steel to it's specific steel tolerances before pouring into a ladle and to casting for it's final block/billet/I-beam/rebar etc.
Used to work for LASCO Steel in Whitby, Ontario, Canada as a Controls Systems Technologist. It was fun.
Yep we did the exact same thing here in Auckland, New Zealand. Plant is gone now though.
@@bendiez7550 Same here, sold and renamed, but still producing.
I was thinking of working at the Gerdau plant in Whitby, do you have any insight on the matter?
Edit: Turns out the Gerdau plant IS the old LASCO plant.
Я работал на такой печи в России на Ижорских заводах. Санкт-Петербург. Слитки отливают до 420 тонн.
@Weeb Destroyah yup, that sounds like the name - I finished there in 1994 and they changed ownership a few years after that ... unfortunately, I did not stay in touch with my workmates and unable to find out the dynamics of the change then. Would be interesting to hear though.
I have a sudden appreciation for the giant heat treat furnaces we have at my plant. Even the odd gas explosion inside the chamber that sounds like someone dropped a ton of bricks from the ceiling sounds like a day at the beach compared to that thing 😳
Seeing those massive cables being held in place by nothing than the sheer current running through them was something very unique and horrifying in a way
I seriously have zero idea of what is happening here but I love it! Looks mighty dangerous but kool at the same time😝🇦🇺
There's a big pot inside that thing that's lined with refractory material (think firebricks) and is used for smelting metals and other compounds that require extreme heat, in the top of the pot there are gigantic graphite/carbon rods that get dipped down onto the pile of material inside to strike an arc, much like a big welder. The arc them melts the metal/material being smelted by the extreme heat of the arc. Those cables you see on the right side are the power cables that feed the carbon rods, there is so much power running through them that they create magnetic fields that repel against each other, which is why you see them moving and wiggling with irregular movements. One of these units draws enough electricity to power several hundred (if not more) homes, these facilities routinely pay one million dollars or more for their monthly power bill. But this is how we get cheap steel, there's no better process for steel refining.
@@TheExplosiveGuy Many steelmaking plants have deals with the power company to only run between 10 pm and 6 AM.
Homestead Works had 11 open hearth furnaces. Each one was the size of a swimming pool, and was capable of producing 375 tons of steel every 4 to 6 hours. Basic Oxygen furnaces and electric arc furnaces take 45 minutes to make a heat. The electrics I worked on were 75 ton each and the basic Oxygen furnaces at Edgar Thompson Works are 180 tons apiece.
@@spaceflight1019 it's pretty phenomenal how much these plants have scaled up over the years, the amount of steel that can be smelted in one batch is insane, 375 tons, my god man. I used to work for a company that refurbished the ladles used at the Nucor steel foundry in WA state, we had to have a piece of equipment normally used for picking up 30 foot tall 100+ ton piles of logs just to move and manipulate the things, they were about 30 feet tall and 14 feet wide and weighed 48,000 pounds empty, it's hard to comprehend something that large being filled with molten steel nearly to the top, day in and day out.
@@TheExplosiveGuy A million bucks per month, what would be the price they pay per kWh for their electricity by the way.
@@steviebboy69 probably a lot less than you and I lol, those giant companies get steep discounts typically.
Atlas Foundry in Tacoma, WA has bigger electric arc furnace, but it doesn't leak as much excitement. When I worked there 35 years ago the did almost exclusively stainless steel. A 14'x14'x12' sand mold ready for casting dropped when a chain swivel link broke one night when I was on shift. No one on had to call the front office a block away to tell them a mold dropped. That was about 3mo work down the tubes.
Thanks for sharing
Add this to the list of things you didn't know
existed. A while back it was gigantic friction welders.
Assuming runs off a standard wall socket 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Well it does need to be a 3 prong with a decent breaker but yeah pretty much.
correct...every now and then it does trip the 15a breaker, but hey it's rare at least...
9v battery!
It's! actually done by rubbing a few balloons on toddlers heads I think you'll find.
@@richardwright3137 😳 Those poor toddlers!
As an electrician I DREAM of seeing one of these in action in person one day, the flash bursting out the vent, the cables thrashing under the sheer amount of current, God aren't arc furnaces beautiful??
Cute little EAF here. Ours is 3x this size. Holds 160tons of liquid steel. Our EAF uses the same amount of electricity in a day as the entire city around it does. Sometimes our EAF has to be shut down so the city has more power.
All EAFs are cute to me, but I work at the largest blast furnace in the western hemisphere.
We put out 14,000 tons of iron a day.
@mephInc That's awesome brother! Melting steel and nice meals :)
@@TinkHerBell
Love my job.
Guys don't grow up. Our sandbox just gets bigger.
I saw these guys in concert once. Stage show was AMAZING!
The sheer amount of brain power to design that beast is astonishing on its own.
Heavy industry is simply amazing to me.
I used to work as a service engineer visiting steelworks to repair and maintain the equipment used In the control rooms adjacent to furnaces like this. The whole floor of the building would shake and sparks and fumes would fly everywhere as the melt started , if this happened in any other industrial scenario, it would be considered a major catastrophic incident!
This needs to be onstage in every industrial metal concert
Lol
I repaired some cooling lines on the head of an old “Lectromelt” furnace way back in the 90’s and they let me hang around to watch it in operation. Hell on earth is exactly how I’d describe what I saw; it was loud, violent, tons of smoke, I could just imagine the devil rising out of it all…
I would very much appreciate experiencing this closely. The fourth state of matter tearing ass.
Well done Sir !
Pretty impressive to watch and hear. Thanks for sharing. Looks like the furnace could use a range hood with water spray scrubbers. Hopefully the steel beams above don’t get weakened by the heat.
Don’t be silly, you’d need at least a 747 to weaken those steel beams
Aluminium smelter in the town I work in in the Scottish Highlands and the smelter uses about 5x more power than the whole town. Granted fortwilliam isn't a big place but alot of juice for possibly the smallest Aluminium smelter in the world haha
I worked for Nucor Steel and they used electric arc furnaces. They weren’t this chaotic however… unless a live artillery round accidentally ended up in the scrap.
Something tells me that isn't just a joke...
@@taliakuznetsova7092 Not at all. Occasionally (maybe once every couple of months) the entire building would shake and you’d hear a muffled concussion. The first time I heard it, I asked someone and they calmly said, “Oh, it’s just an artillery round that the army depot didn’t remove the explosive charge from. Happens every now and then.” 😬
@@hearmeout9138 I'm surprised the furnace material could handle the force without major repair.
@@taliakuznetsova7092 Melted steel is quite viscous yet still plastic, so I assume it contained most of the pressure of the explosion and then the concussion propagated through it to the furnace and then outward from there acoustically.
Rodalco has a couple of videos of an EAF - he shows the meters while it is running - insane to see the voltage of the 100kv+ supply (via pylons) jump about with the load.
Truly the devils Calderón, love the current making those supply cables swing .
Worked in Batch and furnace of a glass factory for years, we used DC in the melter 24/7 in addition to the top fired gas. You could easily see when the DC system was getting serviced just by the viscosity and clarity differences. Thanks for the cool show 👍
There is a good video of a small version of this with a stick welder melting synthetic ruby in a small crucible. Really fascinating process.
Impressive currents, sounds and video as well
God damn those thick ass cables moving like that just from the energy going through them
I think it's called resonance. The average current is around 40,000 amperes. That is NOT a typo!
@@richardmerriam7044 40k Amps? Man I get spooked when I strike a 500a arc
@@embersaffron5522 Indeed! When one of these furnaces (only one) runs the entire country notices because it *literally* causes a dip in the finances and the goverment is informed that it will be running so be prepaired for the finantial setback. In some instances one run of this furnace costs 2-3 figure millions. This is no joke.
The grid is also informed prior to running course. Ofcourse if a country is producing more than enough electricity then its fine but information is shared.
Those electrodes can dump tens of MegaWatts in to that oven, if you look carefull you'll notice sometimes those cables suddenly jump.
That's when current spikes due to uneven distribution of material in the steel soup.
@@picobyte Man I would hate to be the ladle man stiring that soup
I love the ladder guard for “safety” 😂
We used a much smaller one in a lab to melt titanium. No kind of flame can reach the fusion temperature of titanium, only electric arcs.
Dads:"Turn off those wall switches! You know how much the power bill costs?"
Also dads:
You know it's done when the popcorn stops popping.
Wow! I never knew such a gigantic powerful machine existed & it looked terrifying and horrifying yet exhilarating to watch! Thank you!
Edit: I've since learnt that this is a baby, as there's behemoths in massive scale compared to this!
... and as far as arc furnaces go, this one is a little baby.
@@TheMrMused Hey yes, as thus is my first introduction to them & reading the comments has also enlightened me to the existance of much larger ones! The thought boggles my mind & it looks like I'd better search for some vids on the monster versions to really blow my mind?!
Even the largest electric furnace is cute compared to the blast furnace I work at :)
I worked in a melt shop a lot like this one for many years and watching the furnace never got old. It was the brightest light and loudest noise I ever experienced. My first apartment was over a mile away and I could hear it running from there.
Surprised it doesn't compromise the beam above. From this view it looks close to the flames
🎶SHAKE HANDS WITH DANGER🎶
thats what i was thinking must be a one rig of an exhaust
Only jet fuel or office furniture does that.
@@davidpawson7393 is that s 9/11 reference? Lol
@Matt D Affirmative. There's a 1969 edition of Newsweek if I remember correctly that has not only a very interesting cover but article as well.
How my tongue feels when the smoke detector battery is good:
I worked at Nucor steel in Crawfordsville. I was there when the stainless steel furnace went online. It was like a rocket going off. It was badass!
The ones I've seen 3 carbon electrodes maybe a couple feet in diameter. That was at a Nucor Yamata mill in blythville ar.
I used to work in a John Deere gray iron foundry. All that work is interesting but kinda hot.
More please,thank you for uploading this.
Why hell for me as a montanistic student is this pure beauty and heaven
Salute to the cameraman, I wouldn't even be there...
You haven't lived until you hear and feel the pulse shockwaves of the current when the rods are engaged.
Had the opportunity to be in the veiwing area of one of these procedures.
It was like Zues himself letting all the fury of his lightning loose on the melting pot in the forge.
The only thing close to it for me was standing 6 feet away from a nitrofuel dragster opening up full throttle one time.
God like level sounds,I dont know how the guys working this machine do it every day.
You all are on a whole different level of career than I thought was possible,I thought I knew Fire....
Got mad respect for the people that run these machines....
Excellent! I found the next concert stage for our 'Face-Melting' tender tunes.
Sounds exactly like my '65 GTO V8 - 389 tri-power after i rebuilt the engine. I had 2 spark plug wires reversed! The engine ran, but lokked and sounded just like this!
I can’t afford to turn my electric heat on.
This must cost a million a month to run!
Happy new year! 🎉 😂
Really good vid quality
Astounding. Thanks for showing us!!!
Pretty insane that this is economically feasible
What’s the tap weight per heat? Our 3 shells run ~180 tons liquid per heat each.
I use to build the rods for these furnaces. Some of them were 48 inches round. It was hell on earth making them also
There's one here in Brazil they had to built an entire dam and hydro power facility only to operate a few of those blast furnaces. Imagine consuming the entire electrical power on the power grid LMAO
Many years i worked likes a refractory linning specialist. EAF is heart of steelplant and everyone can hear it 😊 But much bigger are convertors, ok, they used for another type of steel, but they can be huge 😮
I have delivered to steel mills and you can hear those from a long ways away. It is a sound like no other.
The electric arc furnace method is also used to smelt silicon from quartz ore. The ore is mixed with coal & in some cases charcoal made from wood. The produced silicon is used to make eldctronics, silicon based products, and solar panels.
I heard they were still looking for a new word to name for how many 0's that follow after 1, are on that electric bill.
What phone is that you recorded with? Cool how the microphone zooms with the video
I worked on an extremely large oven at Algoma Steel in Canada when I was working as a EE. They are awesome.
They vaguely taught us about these in school during my welding apprenticeship. Seeing them makes me feel….grim.
Dr. Frankenstein: I approve of this video.
I bet its powered by clean solor and wind energy 😂
It will be powered by fusion reactors in the future.
_"I've no idea why we stopped..."_ Famous last words lmao
Seems like a great place to catch some fresh air.
How many megawatts is that? The buzzing sounds so powerful and angry!
Looks amazing and so powerful
Heard about these back in the 90s now I finally get to see one.
I'll guarantee you this, that arc furnace doesn't run on "renewables"...
For now
Can’t imagine that flame and heat was doing the girder any good.
This thing looks like it's straight from an Aliens movies. Like a plot device kinda thing.
The comments from people that have worked around these massive machines have really added to what they can do!
Besuchte einmal während meiner Abitur Zeit eine ähnliche Anlage in Duisburg hier in Deutschland.
Sehr beeindruckend es aus der Nähe zu sehen!
I bet the noise must be incredible 😅
This could totally run off of solar power. 😂
To an untrained eye, that appears to be malfunctioning on a grand scale.
And I thought my electric bill was high!
Nice! There is a Nucor facility fairly close to where I live. Been considering signing on just for the experience of working in the industry. Hot, dangerous and dirty is what I hear, but generously rewarded.
More scary when the scrap metal dumped in has snow on it..explodes into very high flames , even around operator
I'm wondering something. How long would one of these run on wind mill power and nothing else?
Any particular reason or are you just trolling?
Guessing you could find that answer with about 5 minutes of internet research and a little bit of napkin math....
Not long at all, if the wind ain’t blowing! 🤣. Like Trump said; “look, honey…we can’t watch TV tonight, the wind ain’t blowing!” Classic line! Lol
Probably about 2 seconds.
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
True heavy metal.
This is what your garage looks like when you try to charge one of the new electric Tesla EVs
Unexpected comment, and well executed internet person! I tip my hat and will continue to drive my large V8. 😁👍
Wonder what happens if you put a car inside one of these things, or an EV would be funny too
@@alienspacebones I just donated my 1991 Ford Explorer Hearse to a charity
It still started with 1 crank and ran super smooth. Original engine and transmission.
Ran and rode like a dream.
32 years old
They don't build them like that anymore
I had an 89 E-150 that was just as good. 250,000 miles, original engine and transmission
I hit 3 concrete poles head on 1 winter and only pushed the bumper back a little
I had a 5 mile per hour bump in a parking spot and it crunched the entire rear quarter on my 2011 Sienna
I was horrified how it collapsed like a soda can
3800 to repair the damage
I hope I never have a head-on crash in the new vehicles
I won't survive
@@ocsrc You know if I owned a hearse I don't think I could part with it. 😁 I drove a little Kia econo-box for a few years, then got my first kind of real truck. Lifted Nissan Titan with a 3" exhaust. I'm so used to having that much steel wrapped around me and sitting high enough I can see what's going on far ahead, I can't go back to driving little cars. Plus I tow and that's just not happening with where the batteries are. I live in a state that's mandating EV with little infrastructure in place to support it. Not going to go well.
@@dro3m Get a good lithium battery fire going in it you could probably turn down the current on the electrodes for a bit, lol.
I’d love to see the transformer that powers this and the current draw! I loved the sound. All the power! Unbelievable 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
What a beautiful sauna!
Was that normal operation?
There looked to be flames directly under a steel beam!
Quite normal. You have three independently operated electrodes connected to each electrical phase off the utility. They are lowered into the furnace which is loaded with a whole bunch of scrap steel until they arc to the steel. They are then moved up and down to maintain that arc within certain current limits, and the heat of all that plasma from the arcs melts the steel very quickly. Most of that smoke is from paint and the carbon electrodes burning off.
What is crazy is you see those hose looking things that are moving? Those are water-jacketed cables that are 6-8" thick. They are swinging like that not because of the motion of the electrodes, but because of the magnetic fields from the intense current of thousands of amps. That much current can melt an entire ladle of steel in about 15 minutes, and it usually takes another charge or two to get get enough molten steel to fill a ladle to move to the caster.
Hate to see the power bill for that beast .
the electric arc funace at evraz rocky mountain steel costs about a million dollars per day, directly connected to commanche power plant behind the steel mill, and uses enough power in 24 hours to supply the city of pueblo colorado( where the mill is located) for an entire year
The day plant layout occured, the powers that be decided let's just put the ten billion megajoule output flame right under the structural celing beams. Yes William, great idea, we will put that right under there. perfect!!!