What is this? it's some kind of furnace, incineration plant... 🤔

[u/Bodzio1981]

[u/Jobediah]

looks like smelting iron ore

[u/powerhammerarms → u/Jobediah]

For sure. That looks like taconite. I grew up on the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota and my whole family worked either in the mines or on the railroad hauling taconite. We used to use the little pellets in our slingshots.

[u/UpdootDaSnootBoop → u/powerhammerarms]

I thought Tuesday was taco night

[u/bandley3 → u/UpdootDaSnootBoop]

Only when it falls on May 5th

[u/OhDivineBussy → u/UpdootDaSnootBoop]

As someone from Texas I can confirm that you are indeed correct.

[u/DwabJohnstont → u/UpdootDaSnootBoop]

Tuesday is pizza day

[u/20PoundHammer → u/powerhammerarms]

They hauled taconite on the rails by me and we would walk rails and fill up bags of the stuff for out sling shots. Now, I doubt they even give kids sling shots anymore, they will not know the pain of a band break . . .

[u/failingatdeath → u/powerhammerarms]

But i think there drying them for shipping not smelting them

[u/powerhammerarms → u/failingatdeath]

I didn't pay attention to the part about smelting. You are correct.

The rock is blasted out, sent through mills until it's a powder, run through a concentrator (magnets), turned into a slurry and mixed with bentonite, water is extracted and they are rolled in balling drums. That pellet (at this point actually called a green ball) is soft and they are put into these furnaces to bake into the hard taconite pellets we know and love.

These pellets are loaded into trains and you can see them steaming from the mines on the railroad on its way to steel mills.

All along the railroad tracks, you can collect these taconite pellets. We also used to throw them at trains when the trains would go by.

I may have missed some steps and the process may have changed a little. But that's how it was done when I was a lad.

Edit: to add trains

[u/Top_Profession4860 → u/powerhammerarms]

The Mesabi Iron Range. Tom Russell made great song about it called "Mesabi" !

[u/powerhammerarms → u/Top_Profession4860]

Stealing Electricity Tom Russell?

[u/sourceholder → u/Jobediah]

Polar ice cap remover.

[u/LefsaMadMuppet]

Toconite mill i think. Low grade iron ore shipped in a marble sized balls.

[u/Alech1m → u/LefsaMadMuppet]

So it gets refined into these balls to be shipped to another refinery to be processed even further? Why not just melt it to steel directly/on site?

[u/LefsaMadMuppet → u/Alech1m]

Required infrastructure isn't there to do it and it is cheaper to move it to where infrastructure is already located. When all the easy to mine iron in Minnesota ran out, this was the next best method to get it to the steel plants which were generally on the other side of the Great Lakes (which was closer to sources of coal used to make the steel at the time).

[u/socialcommentary2000]

Taconite. When you have low grade ores under 60 percent concentration you can't throw them in a typical blast furnace and have a good time, you have to pre-prep the ore by cooking it into something else and upping the concentration of Fe. Taconite operations do that. They take ore and pre-cook it into small round balls (that you see in the video) and then that's used in the blast furnace to smelt iron from.

[u/mmmUrsulaMinor → u/socialcommentary2000]

So damn interesting

[u/gudetamaronin → u/socialcommentary2000]

"And have a good time" 🤣

[u/velvetskilett]

It could be a rotary coke oven.

[u/jeffersonairmattress → u/velvetskilett]

Yeah I think they are coking this coal.

[u/kveggie1 → u/velvetskilett]

I think so too

[u/Careful_Stand_35]

It may be a sintering plant. Commonly found in steelmaking operations, where minerals, coke and other compounds are ground, blended and sintered under heat. The resulting blend is then injected into blast furnaces as fuel and mineral additives.

[u/Affectionate-Art3429 → u/Careful_Stand_35]

I just love the taste of ore in my soda

[u/GimmeCoffeeeee]

Clearly footage of Factorio II

[u/2DHypercube → u/GimmeCoffeeeee]

The Factory Must Grow

[u/Wildfathom9]

It's very obviously a circular womptabulator.

[u/ohhowcanthatbe]

A coke plant?

[u/jeffersonairmattress]

Continous rotary coke oven,

Powdered coal is heated and turns into these larger chunks of coke.

Better than this old reciprocating process.

[u/mandioca-magica]

Looks like some Goron stuff

[u/One_Tailor_3233]

Could it be making charcoal for filters and grills

[u/DonkeyJoe82]

Coke pusher at steel plant?

[u/Bobwords]

So I don't know the machine, but I do know taconite a bit - I have a buddy who ships it for a living out of Superior Wisconsin. We're both Minnesotans so I give him shit frequently for as he says "working behind the cheddar curtain".

They used to ship raw slabs of ore from MN out to OH/PA to refine, but they worked out some time ago that it's cheaper to get them rolled into balls that are something like 95% pure iron before loading them on the boat. He works in HUGE machines to move the shit that are 3+ stories high and longer than a football field. Always blows my mind how big mining shit is.

For MN the shit comes off the iron range, and there's even a town named Taconite.

[u/liquorpig]

Incinerating a furnace must be really hard!

[u/Mr-Potatolegs]

My neighbor works at the “Grey Iron” Gm foundry. Metal Casting Operations or whatever the fuck it’s called now. He said when things get wild, they go all the way wild

[u/Rough-Analysis]

This should be in videos that ended too soon

[u/ShotoMoyo1]

They're making oreos

[u/toesinbloom]

You ever smelt iron? It's a metallic kind of smell

[u/that-----one---guy]

Brings me back to my auto smelter days

[u/BoltsofGondor]

That's how they make pet food