Environmental Stewardship
At Eramet Marietta, we continuously analyze methods by which we can be environmental stewards. There are the obvious steps we've taken that include capital projects aimed at improving our production and environmental performance, but also the not-so-obvious day-to-day things that we've always done, or initiated because they just make sense.
Included are:
- The 2008 rebuild of Furnace #1 - the largest electric arc furnace at the facility. This $14 million project entailed relining and deepening the shell of the furnace, which not only resulted in improved furnace performance, but also minimized the potential for future malfunction events and resulted in a 25% plant-wide decrease in actual particulate matter emissions and over 40% decrease of emissions from the furnace alone.
- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle has always been a part of Eramet Marietta's operations. By-products generated from the production of ferromanganese alloys, which still contain manganese, are used to produce silicomanganese alloys. By-products from the production of silicomanganese, called "slag", is then sold for use in the production of mineral fiber (a component used in building materials) and gravel used for infill, driveway and road paving and even cinders used to treat icy and snowy roads.
- In October 2007, we joined the Tox-Minus Initiative launched by the Ohio EPA. Participants in this program work with the OHIO EPA to identify, evaluate and implement feasible and effective pollution reduction or prevention strategies with the goal of reducing waste, air and water-related emissions.
Planned Projects:
- Installation of new baghouse technology on Furnace #1 is slated to take place in 3rd quarter of 2010 and will result in a further decrease in emissions from Furnace #1.
- Beginning in mid-March we began a rebuild project on our #12 furnace that is similar in scope to the project completed on #1 in 2008.
