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Show COLUMBIA STEEL OFFICIALS U PRESENT AT CHARGING OVENS ' IRONTON BY-PRODUCT PLANT :! . i The Columbia Steel corporation's Ironton plant, midway ;' ' between Provo and Springville, now is in operation ! , i Exactly one year and one day after the first shovelfuls of earth was turned at the steel plant the temporary door ,;. . linings of three ovens were torn out Monday and three steel i 1 doors swung into place as seven tons of coking coal poured ! into each of the three ovens, said to have been ovens No. 6, i 16 and 26. I And the iron manufacturing industry of Utah was . ; begun 1 : Three more ovens were charged later this morning. 1 ,, They were said to have been 9, 19 and 29. The ovens will be . fired in sets of three eacti, in order similar to the above. This ; is done so that the coal taken in will not reduce the tempera- ; ) t ture of the ovens more than absolutely necessary. '.' The first charges of coal were about seven tons for each oven. This j charge will be increased gradually as the gas supply accumulates until 13 tons of coal are poured into each oven at every charge. As there will be 33 ovens to charge every 10 hours it will mean the coking of 429 tons of coal uViriy ton hours, or more than an average of a thousand tons each 24 hours. The Utah Valley Gas company began be-gan feeding its surplus gas into the coke ovens Saturday afternoon, to bring up the temperature of the1 ovens which had been using coke as heating fuel. That was why some Trovo housekeepers found a shortage short-age of gas Sunday. The gas company com-pany was supplying all its possible surplus Monday to aid the plant in keeping a high temperature in the ovens. The by-products plant's own gas began accumulating soon after the first three ovens were charged and this gas was immediately turned back into the ovens to aid in. raising the temperature, said to demand 1400 degrees of heat for the proper coking of the coal. The work of charging the ovens continued Monday afternoon and all night, as the 24 hour shifts have begun. be-gun. As rapidly as the gas accumulated accumu-lated the ovens in series of three were charged. It was expected that all of the ovens would be charged before Tuesday morning. Officers of the Columbia Steel corporation and several Provo and Spri'igville men were present Monday Mon-day morning when the first ovens were charged and will be present Tuesday when the first coke is blown out. ' The officials of the Columbia Steel corporation who witnessed the firing of the coke ovens Monday were President Wigginton E. Creed; J. D. Grant, first vice president; D. II. Botchford, third vice president; L. F. Rains, fourth vice president, and G. E. Sibbett, chief engineer. The blast furnace will not be charged until a large surplus supply of coke is available and it has been demonstrated that the by products pro-ducts plant is in successful operation. opera-tion. The stoves of the furnace are charged with alternate layers of coke, limestone and iron ore, from the top, the heat of the burning coke melting the ore, which fluzed with lime, is poured out into "pigs" at the bottom of the furnace. |