271 Comments for Acme Coke Plant

thats pretty cool thanks for noticing that toots.

sad

My favorite pics are usually the ones in the hospitals, particularly the asylums (sidetrack: which I really feel like putting my sister in right now cause I can hear her singing out in the kitchen right now and its 2 AM! ) but i cant resist my love for old machines and wires!

it looks like there is a person looking down from the window in the top left corner

These are hydraulic directional valves, which are manually operated using the levers to shift the spools inside the valves to direct the hydraulic fluid to control the motions of some equiment.

It's not the volts that "light you up" it's the amps.

I would imagine if one where burned to death at that temp, there wouldn't be too much left. Not the way I want to go....

Wallpaper??????(o pul-eeeseee!) Would be lovely.

Craig, thank you for all the great information about the machinery and the coking process!

Thanks Mr. Motts, I worked for Wilputte Corp., the company that built coke ovens like these from 1975-1983, and saw some of them under construction and helped commision them. Now few are left around the country. Your photos are a beautiful record of what once was.

OSHA regulations still require some tyoe of hard-wired emergency stop button like these for machinery, even if it is PLC (computer) controlled.

In the foreground is a coal conveyor to bring the coal to the coal tower seen in the left background. The stack is behind the conveyor in the right background. The phot's perspective makes it look as if the conveyor and stack are connected, but they are not.

Generations of men and even some women worked in these plants all over the US. They paid very well after the depression ended when unions came to be ane production worked up for WW2, thru the mid 1990's. It was hard work under hazardous conditions, but they took pride in it and were glad to have jobs that created gave them a middle class lifestyle that let them pay for a college education for their kids. Now most of these kinds of well-paying jobs are gone to foreign countries, as 50% of steel sold in the US is made overseas.

The stack on the end of the main shown in the picture was to light off the gas and burn it like a huge torch in the event of an upset condition in the gas processing plant. Since the coal in the ovens was still being baked (couldn't stop that once it started), gas was still being produced, and the only safe thing to do was to burn it off in this flare stack.

The coke oven gas was cleaned in a process plant that looked like a small refinery. The tars, oils and other chemicals such as toluene and napthalene were removed and recovered and sold. The cleaned gas was then returned to the coke ovens to fire them.