Steel Mills
Electrical Outage at ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor Triggers Emergency Flare System
Written by Sandy Williams
February 6, 2019
ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor called firefighters to help control a towering blaze from a coke oven battery late Tuesday night.
ArcelorMittal spokeswoman Mary Beth Holford said the plant “experienced a high voltage power interruption for a short duration” about 10:05 p.m. Tuesday. The outage triggered an emergency flare system that burned off excess coke oven gas, resulting in flames that were visible from U.S. 12.
Holford said the plant required about 12 hours to re-establish operations. “No employees or contractors were injured during the incident, and the interruption will not impact ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor’s ability to meet customer demand,” she said.
Nick Meyer, spokesman for Northern Indiana Public Service Co., said two outages of less than a minute duration occurred—one at 10:05 and a second at 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday.
“While initial assessments are not showing issues on NIPSCO’s system, indicating it operated as designed, we’re working with ArcelorMittal to help pinpoint the root cause of these two interruptions,” Meyer said.
A firefighter from Porter, Ind., was transported to the hospital and treated for heat exhaustion.
Sandy Williams
Read more from Sandy WilliamsLatest in Steel Mills
U.S. Steel sues Algoma over iron pellet shipments
U.S. Steel is suing Algoma over the Canadian flat-rolled producer's rejection of iron pellet shipments, arguing it has breached its contract.
August US mill shipments slip but still higher than last year
The American Iron and Steel Institute reported a decline in the monthly shipments of US mills from July to August.
TransPod, Algoma, Supreme Steel linkup anchors Canadian steel in high-speed transit build
The three Canadian companies have announced a strategic partnership to support the development of an ultra-high-speed transit line from Edmonton to Calgary.
Metallus, USW agree to tentative four-year labor deal
Metallus and the United Steelworkers (USW) have agreed to a tentative four-year labor contract.
ArcelorMittal Dofasco resumes cokemaking after emergency maintenance
The Canadian steelmaker reported on Sept. 30 that “urgent maintenance” was needed in its coke plant off-gas systems. The work required coke oven gas from the No. 2 coke plant to be flared for most of that week.