BOS Scrap Loading

The skip in the frame is a working vessel, not a relic. Filled with steel scrap and positioned beneath the crane gantries of the Basic Oxygen Steelmaking plant at Port Kembla Steelworks, it represents the opening stage of a process that has run continuously on this site since 1972. Basic oxygen steelmaking arrived at Port Kembla as part of the major Phase 4 expansion, which introduced 200/250 tonne BOS converters alongside the fifth blast furnace. Before 1972, the steelworks had relied on open hearth furnaces, the first of which tapped its initial heat on 8 November 1931. The BOS plant rendered those furnaces redundant over the following decade; the last open hearth closed in 1982 after the third BOS vessel was installed and running. The cranes visible overhead are integral to that process. Scrap is charged into the converter alongside molten iron from the blast furnace, the proportions varying depending on the grade of steel being produced. An overhead crane lifts and tips the scrap-loaded skip directly into the mouth of the vessel before the oxygen lance descends. The speed of the BOS process compared to open hearth steelmaking was a significant part of its appeal: what once took hours was reduced to minutes per heat. Port Kembla Steelworks is Australia's largest crude steel production plant, sitting on 760 hectares of coastal plain south of Wollongong. The site has been in continuous steelmaking operation since No. 1 blast furnace, named Emily after Emily Hoskins who lit it, was blown in on 29 August 1928. The BOS plant photographed here in 2016 remains part of an active works. Blast furnace No. 5 was still operating at the time of this photograph, and the $1.15 billion reline of No. 6 blast furnace was still years away from commencing. The scrap in the skip was going to become steel.