Mountain State Carbon (Follansbee, West Virginia)

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Mountain State Carbon, LLC is a 50-50 joint venture with RG Steel and Severstal North America who evenly share the output of high-quality coke for use in each respective company’s blast furnaces. The coke-making operation is located in Follansbee, W. Va., directly across the Ohio River from RG Steel’s Wheeling steelmaking operations.

The coke facility produces metallurgical-grade coke, coke gas byproducts (light oil, ammonium sulfate, fuel gas, coal tar, sulfuric acid) from coal for use at various other Severstal and RG Steel facilities and for commercial sales. This operation involves three three meter and one six meter batteries that produce coke. In addition, the facility operates a by-product plant that recovers chemicals from the process and prepares the coke oven gas for use as fuel. The Follansbee plant also includes a material storage area located to the west and south.

The maximum capacity of the coke plant is 174.9 tons per hour and 1,535,000 tons per year of coke output with 249.8 tons per hour and 2,190,000 tons per year of coal input. The facility has the potential to operate twenty-four (24) hours a day for seven (7) days per week. In early 2010 pushed its 25th million ton of coke and employed 440 people.

The plant was constructed in 1917 by Wheeling Steel to supply coke for its operations and those of La Belle Iron Works in Steubenville. Following a 1968 merger the company name was changed to Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel which operated the plant until 2005 when Mountain State Carbon was formed. At that time Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel had reduced its need for coke by 50 percent with the conversion of its Mingo Junction plant to electric arc furnace technology and was looking for a partner to take its excess coke production.

With the demise of Wheeling Pittsburgh in 2008, Sererstal acquired the remaining 50 percent interest of Wheeling Pittsburgh and later sold it to RG Steel. In 2012 RG Steel entered into bankruptcy.At the time of the bankruptcy, RG Steel owed Severstal over $22 million.

www.rg-steel.com/whoweare/jointventures.html