The AJAX furnace was a modification of the tilting

open hearth furnace An open-hearth furnace or open hearth furnace is any of several kinds of industrial furnace in which excess carbon and other impurities are burnt out of pig iron to produce steel. Because steel is difficult to manufacture owing to its high melt ...

that used blown

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as wel ...

to improve productivity. The process was used in the UK during the 1960s at a time of transition from open hearth to oxygen based steel making.

History and description

The AJAX process invented in 1957, and named after its originator, Albert Jackson. The process involved modifying an

to use

instead of air. The use of oxygen in the open hearth negated the need for an external fuel source, as with Linz-Donawitz converters. The furnaces were used at the

United Steel Companies The United Steel Companies was a steelmaking, engineering, coal mining and coal by-product group based in South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, England. History The company was registered in 1918 and the following year saw a joining together of ste ...

at the Appleby-Frodingham steelworks near

Scunthorpe Scunthorpe () is an industrial town and unparished area in the unitary authority of North Lincolnshire in Lincolnshire, England of which it is the main administrative centre. Scunthorpe had an estimated total population of 82,334 in 2016. A pre ...

, Lincolnshire, England as an alternative to installing completely new oxygen based steelmaking plant. In operational practice at Appleby-Frodingham the design initially increased productivity by 38%, as well as reducing scrap requirement from per . Later productivity increases were from 70% to 100%, with conversion costs reduced to 68%. By 1962 five of the six open hearth furnaces at the plant had been converted. Conversion time of the open hearths to the oxygen based process was around 28 days on average, with a stated capital cost of £180,000 each. In 1966 the Appleby-Frodingham steelworks decided to replace the AJAX production with Linz-Donawitz converters.

History and description

See also

References

Further reading