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Iron
Published in Robert Routledge, Discoveries and Inventions of the Ninteenth Century, 2018
Deferring for the moment any description of the latest blast furnaces, we invite his attention to Fig. 17, which represents the furnace used in the first half of our century, but which now is of an obsolete type, Fig. 18 being the section and plan of the same. The lower part of Fig. 17 shows where the molten metal has been allowed to run out of the furnace into channels made in dry sand; first a main stream, then branches to right and left, each of these with smaller offsets on each side of it. These smaller channels are the moulds for the pigs, so called because of the fancied resemblance of their position with regard to the branch that supplied them, to the litter of a sow. They are easily broken off from the larger mass, and then form pieces about 3 ft. long with a -shaped section, 4 in. wide, the weight being from 60 to 80 lbs. This is iron of the crudest kind, and though it is often referred to as “cast iron,” it is, as a matter of fact, not used in this state for any castings, except those of the very roughest and largest kind: a certain amount of purification is requisite in most cases. This is given by fusing the metal—along with some form of oxide and often other matters—in a cupola furnace, which is like a small blast furnace, being from 8 ft. to 20 ft. high and uses coke for fuel with a cold blast.
Numerical modelling of blast furnace – Evolution and recent trends
Published in Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy, 2020
Prakash B. Abhale, Nurni N. Viswanathan, Henrik Saxén
Human civilisation started using iron as early as 1500 BC (Sahi 1979; Agrawal et al. 1985; Tewari 2003). Archeological evidences show that production of molten iron started first in China around 800 BC (Mei et al. 2015). Since then the iron production technology has evolved continuously. Interestingly, the idea of counter current gas–solid shaft reactor developed during those times is still valid in modern blast furnaces. One can say that forerunners of the modern blast furnace date to the beginning of eighteenth century when coke was used for the first time as fuel (Mott 1957). Subsequently, at the beginning of nineteenth century cold blast was replaced by hot blast (Landes 1969). Industrial revolution with the advent of the steam engine resulted in large industrial production of iron. Till today the blast furnace has remained as one of the prime producers of liquid iron from iron ore. Though many alternate processes have challenged the existence of the blast furnace, it has been adapted to the needs of the time and has remained thermally, chemically and economically efficient.