Coke Oven Battery Plant

Bottrop, Germany

At a coke oven battery plant like this, metallurgical-grade bituminous coal is baked in air-tight retorts to form a hard, porous, fixed-carbon coke fuel for smelting iron in blast furnaces. The coal is loaded into the long battery of tall, narrow retorts from above by the traveling loader at upper left, and baked for several hours, driving off a range of volatile chemical gasses and tars. The red-hot coke is then pushed horizontally out of the ovens by an automated ram and quenched in a water spray tower. Wastewater from coking is highly toxic and carcinogenic. It contains phenolic, aromatic, heterocyclic, and polycyclic organics, and inorganics including cyanides, sulfides, ammonium and ammonia. Despite the environmental controls on this equipment, this coke plant releases 378,000 tons of CO2, 2.3 tons of benzene, 8.6 kg of mercury, and numerous other toxics into the environment annually.

So many thanks to Motorfluggruppe Grenzland for flight support!