The gas was drawn thru large exhauster fans into a refinery like processing plant where tars, oils, napthalene, benzene, and other chemicals and dyes were extracted and sold. The 'cleaned' coke oven gas was then used to fire the ovens again, or used to supplement natural gas elsewhere in the steel mill, or even mixed with natural gas and distributed throughout the city. Coke Oven Gas has a btu value about half that of natural gas.

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.

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.

Operator's cab is the part with the window on the left side.

The gas was 1200 to 1800F. The stand pipes were refractory lined. Once inside the main the gasses were cooled to 180F with an ammonia water spray.

This is taken on top of the battery of ovens. There was a hopper car that rode on rails at this level, which dumped the coal into the ovens below thru manhole covers. On the left are the hot rails for the car on their supports. On the right are the gass offtake pipes which collected the coal gasses as the coal was coked, and the gasses were drawn to a process plant where the various volatiles were removed (toluenes, napthalenes, oils, etc., and the scrubbed gas was then used to fire the ovens to make more coke.

Industry calls the scrappers "copper rats" who take whatever easily removed copper witing and controls from abandoned plants.

Not sure wht it is, but looks like picture is taken looking at a corner of a square shaped bucket, so we only see two of the four sides. There is probably another lifting lug similar to the one on the left side around the corner on the opposite side out of view on the right. The photo taken from this angle really makes it interesting.

The quench tower is basically a chimney with an array of water pipes and spray nozzles just above the tunnel opening. The quench car had 2000F coke in it hot from the ovens. and the car brought it under this structure where water sprays cooled it down. There would be a white plume of water vapor like a cloud coming out of the chimney, rising into the sky like a great cumulus cloud.

The hot rails were for 250V DC, one hot and one ground.