Bienenkorboefen von Connellsville

1880 · Beehive Coke Oven · Work 349 of 1,871

Bienenkorboefen von Connellsville, 1880, Beehive Coke Oven

A long row of beehive coke ovens at Connellsville in Pennsylvania, domed brick chambers built into a bank with charging holes on top and a larryman walking the tracks above.

What it was used for
Brick beehive ovens in which the coal of the Pittsburgh seam was baked into metallurgical coke. They were charged from above through the trunnel head; the heat of the previous charge started the coking. The Coal and Coke Heritage Center at Penn State Fayette gives a usual coking time of 48 hours, 72 at weekends, about 850 gallons of quenching water per charge, and six ovens to a worker, of which he drew three a day. The oven counts are only usable with their reference area: about 550 ovens in the region in 1870; in 1910, according to the historical marker, 44,252 of Pennsylvania's 55,166 ovens lay in the Connellsville region; in 1913, according to the state historical commission, 38,000 ovens in the district supplied half the nation's metallurgical coke, carried away in 2,000 railcars a day.
What was new
Against the coking heap the oven was the advance: the state historical commission reckons the heap converted only about 50 per cent of a ton of coal into coke, the beehive oven as much as 70. The rest went into the air - a mixture of ammonia, tar, phenols and smoke; the by-product oven later captured the ammonia and tar. The Park Service's HAER documentation speaks of the intense pollution problems associated with beehive coking. In 1900 Alverton No. 1 mined over 100,000 tons of coal and produced 72,000 tons of coke. A contemporary wrote in 1880 that five thousand coke ovens were sending their pernicious fumes heavenward. The barb: in 1910 beehive ovens made over 80 per cent of American coke, by 1930 less than 6; the last went out in 1972, and their replacements were shut in 1983 because they could not meet clean air standards.

Further reading