Blue Circle’s Sparrows Point, MD. plant has been using a basalt-lined pipe for handling abrasive blast furnace slag for 17 years without needing to replace it.
Basalt Lined Pipe Key to Problem Solving

Granulated blast furnace slag is extremely abrasive. Moving the granulated slag slurry wears pipes and elbows, resulting in downtime and higher maintenance costs. Blue Circle Cement’s Sparrows Point, MD. facility is well aware of the problems that moving this abrasive material can cause. The company produces about 850,000 tons of slag cement annually.

A water granulating/grinding operation that turns slag left over from the production of iron into slag cement, the Blue Circle plant is the first and oldest of its kind to be built in the United States. It is the largest producer of the granulated blast furnace slag in one location in the country, producing 2,850 tpd of slag cement.
NewCem Slag Cement

The slag cement produced by Blue Circle is called NewCem. Used as a Portland Cement additive, NewCem can replace as much as 70% of Portland cement in concrete mixes. The proportion is based on the specific job requirement, and the conditions and desired characteristics of the concrete. NewCem provides specific concrete properties such as improved workability; permeability; resistance to sulfates and chlorides; and resistance to alkali-silica reaction.

It has a greater strength potential and produces a lighter color product, say its makers. Used in numerous general construction applications, NewCem is preferred by many engineers and concrete suppliers who produce high-performance concrete. The product meets ASTM 0-989, Grade 120, and AASHTO M-302 standard specifications of ground granulated blast-furnace slag for use in concrete and mortars. In the last decade, NewCem has been used in an estimated 40 million cu yd of concrete.

The slag cement production plant at Sparrows Point was designed specifically to handle slag produced by Bethlehem Steel’s huge “L” blast furnace and went online in March 1981. One of the largest producing blast furnaces in the western hemisphere, the “L” furnace produces about 8,000 tpd of iron. The furnace runs continuously 365 days a year. To keep pace with the furnace. Blue Circle also runs 24 hours a day, three shifts a day. The Blue Circle plant and the steel mill plant are located near each other on the Chesapeake Bay.

Prior to the construction of the Sparrows Point plant, some of the slag produced by the steel mill was used as a fill material, but the majority of the slag was considered unusable waste material. Today, using the water granulation system Blue Circle consistently converts all of the “L” furnace slag into the high quality slag that is used to make cement.