A visit of the World Cultural Heritage site Völklinger Ironworks is an adventure: Deep into the dark corridors of the burden shed, high up into airy height onto the viewing platform of the blast furnace.
UNESCO World Heritage site Völklinger Ironworks
The first steelworks was set up in Völklingen in 1873. The Röchling family bought it in 1881 and founded the Völklingen Ironworks. By 1903, pig iron was being smelted in six blast furnaces and processed to steel. The mid 1960s saw over 17,000 people working at the ironworks. The steel crisis of the 1970s, however, led to the closure of the blast furnace works. In 1994, UNESCO declared the disused ironworks a World Cultural Heritage Site. It is the only so well-preserved ironworks in this size.
Panoramic view from the coal tracks
The six blast furnaces are hidden behind brackets, pipework, the blast heating apparatus and flues. They are 27 meters high and have a diameter of 10 meters. Every 2.5 - 3 hours an average of 130 tonnes of pig iron was tapped.
In the foreground one can see the powerful track system of the inclined ore lift over which the monorail cars were transported. They supplied all six blast furnaces with raw materials via a central plant.
Tucked away below the mighty inclined ore lift, one can see the blast furnace office. It housed the offices of the blast furnace managers, day rooms and washrooms for the ore processing supervisor and the shift foreman.
Between the blast furnace office and the blast furnaces one can see the long and flat burden shed (Möllerhalle). It was used to store iron ore, sinter, scrap and lime. These ingredients were used to create the "Möller", a mixture that was fed to the blast furnaces. The raw materials were transported by train to the Möllerhalle and tipped from above.
The Water Tower
Built in 1918, this building was one of the first of a new industrial architectural form: clear, geometrically arranged lines, concrete and brick. The reservoir, 20 metres up, could hold 3000 cubic metres of water. It was a reserve, for example, for when pumps failed or pipes were damaged.
The Cooling Tower and the Gas Holders
The water used to cool the blast furnaces and machinery was cooled down in cooling towers and fed back into the water circuit of the hut. The cooling tower on the coal siding is the last completely preserved cooling tower on the hut site.
Here you can see the two Saarstahl gas holders 70-metre tall in which the gas from the blast furnaces used to be held in interim storage. Next to it is the telescopic gas holder, which was able to adapt its size to the amount of gas being held. Here, the gas from the coking-plant was stored.
Working in the blower hall
One shift in the blower shed consisted of 12 workers headed by a foreman. One engine operator was responsible for each blower. Uninterruptedly, the flywheels sprayed a fine mist of oil into the shed. There were no fixed break times. As a rule, the food the men had brought with them was consumed at some time in the middle of the shift. Next to each blower there was a simple table and chair.
The blast cylinder
The blast cylinder is at the rear of the blower. Like an oversized air pump, it generated the blast for the furnaces. The blast was collected in enormous containers and then despatched to the blast heaters through steel pipes. The blowers developed between 2000 and 3600 horsepower.
Since the flywheel had a diameter of almost eight metres and weighed 45 tonnes, the engine needed all the strength it could muster. But once the flywheel had reached its working speed of some 75 rpm, it certainly took some stopping. It thus made sure that the engine ran evenly.
The engine worked much like a car engine, except for the fact that it was driven by gas instead of petrol. When it was starting, the gas engine had a pretty big job to do, for it had to set the enormous flywheel in motion.
The Diesel locomotive
In 1860, a train ran for the first time along the Saar between Saarbrücken and Trier. This was an important factor in the foundation of the Völklingen Ironworks. The works' own locomotives brought the heavy wagons from the station, to the raw material bunkers or the coal silos of the coking-plant.
The coking plant
The inclined ore lift
The monorail cars were transported to the gout stage via the inclined ore lift.
Because the inclined ore lift was designed to cater for a height of exactly 27 metres it was impossible to expand the blast furnace system to keep up with developments in the iron and steel producing industry. As a result the Völklinger Hütte was no longer profitable and was closed in 1986.
The charging of the blast furnaces
The blast furnace men called, the filling of the blast furnaces with raw materials for iron production, ‘Charging’. Iron ore, sinter, additives, coke, and ferruginous residues from industry or scrap from refuse incineration were poured into the ‘furnace throat’; the blast furnace charging hopper.
The blast furnace charger hopper
Two "fillers" per blast furnace monitored the filling of the blast furnaces at every weather. They emptied the monorail cars into the gout bowl, sometimes even by hand. Because of the life-threatening gas that could escape from the bell, the "fillers" had to wear respiratory protection.
The dry gas cleaning unit
Gas produced in the blast furnaces was an important energy source for the ironworks. It drove the gas engines and was used to generate heat in the coking-plant; blast heating apparatus; sintering-plant and rolling-mill furnaces. The dry gas cleaning process filtered dust making the gas reusable.
The last tapping at Völklinger Ironworks
Every two to two and a half hours a hole was punched in the blast furnace. The tap holes for pig iron and slag are embraced by the steel coat and filled with clay slate so that they can be closed easily again.
State Chancellery Saarland in cooperation with World Cultural Heritage Site Völklinger Ironworks