Discoveries and Inventions of the Nineteenth Century

by Robert Routledge

Fig. 20.—Fibrous Fracture of Wrought Iron.

Nothing in the way of inventions can be compared to those of Cort’s as to the effect they have had in promoting the iron industry, until we reach a period some years after the middle of our century; but we must not neglect to recognize the scarcely inferior importance of Rogers’ improvement. Singularly enough, neither of these men reaped any benefit from his inventions. Cort died in the last year of the eighteenth century, quite a poor man, having been supported only by a niggardly pension of some £160 from the Government, and leaving his family in indigent circumstances. Yet a most eminent authority on iron questions (Sir W. Fairbairn) estimated—some time about the middle of our era—that the two inventions of Cort’s alone, the rolling-mill and the reverberatory puddling furnace, had by that time added to the wealth of Great Britain by an amount equivalent to six hundred million pounds sterling. For many iron-masters had profited by these inventions, amassing very great fortunes, in some instances also acquiring titles of honour. Clearly to Cort and Rogers may be applied the sic vos non vobis saying.

We shall now turn to the improvements that have been effected in the blast furnace, and of these none perhaps has been more marked than that made by Neilson, when in 1828 he substituted heated air for the ordinary cold air that had before always supplied the blast. It will be remembered that the heat is due to the combination of only the oxygen of the air with the carbon of the coke, but the greater part of the air—the four-fifths of nitrogen—take no part in the action, beyond abstracting a large proportion of the heat; but when the air is heated to a high temperature before entering the furnace, the cooling effect of the nitrogen is greatly obviated, and consequently a much higher temperature is obtained at the place of combustion, and the requisite intensity of heat is at once produced, which is most effective in completing the fusion and separation from each other of the slags and iron, and also in accomplishing the reduction of the oxide. But Neilson found that the net result of burning some fuel to heat the air before entering the furnace was a great economy of the total fuel required for smelting the ore. He had to encounter many difficulties in carrying his invention into practice; the iron ovens first used for heating the air were rapidly oxidized; and when thick cast iron pipes were substituted, these were liable to leak at the joints on account of the expansions and contractions caused by changes of temperature. Then the new invention had as usual to contend with established prejudices and misconceptions; but it soon came into use in Scotland, where it effected a great saving; inasmuch as it was found possible to use with the hot blast raw coal of a certain kind, plentiful in Scotland, because the heat retained by the ascending gases sufficed to convert the coal at the top of the charge into coke.

It will be remembered that the active agent in the reduction of the ore is the carbonic oxide gas formed by the incomplete combustion of the carbon of the fuel; or what comes to the same thing, the absorption by carbonic acid first produced of another proportion of carbon. The carbon oxide robs the iron oxide of its oxygen to become itself changed into carbonic acid. In reality however the action is more complex than this in its chemical relations; for instance, metallic iron will under certain circumstances act conversely on carbonic acid, and rob it of half its oxygen. The net result of the reactions between carbon, iron, iron oxide, and these gases depends mainly upon the temperature and pressure and upon the relative quantities of each substance present. In the gases escaping from the blast furnace there is always a large quantity (nearly one-third) of carbonic oxide. At the blast furnaces in work during the first half of our century the combustible gases were allowed to burn to waste as they issued from the top of the furnace, in the manner shown in Fig. [17], and at night the flames used to form a weird and striking feature in the prospect of an iron-smelting region.

Instead of allowing the escaping gases to burn to waste, it became the practice about 1860, and so continues, to draw them off and burn them under steam boilers or use their flames for heating the blast. An effective method of withdrawing the gases is shown in Fig. [21], which is a section through the upper part of a smelting furnace, with the “cup and cone” arrangement. The mouth of the furnace is covered by a shallow iron cone a, open at the bottom, into which fits another cone b, attached to a chain c, sustained by an arm of the lever d, which is firmly held in position by the chain e, and is also provided with a counterpoise f. When the mouth of the furnace is thus closed, the gases find an exit by the opening g, seen behind the cones, and leading into a downward passage, through which they are drawn by the draught of a tall chimney to the place where they are burnt. The charge for the furnace is filled into the hopper a, and at the proper time the chain, e, is slackened when the weight of the material resting on the suspended cone overcomes that of the counterpoise, and the charge slides down over the surface of the cone b, which is immediately drawn up again by the counterpoise, so that the opening into the air is at once closed.

Fig. 21.—Cup and Cone.

The march of improvement in the blast furnace has been characterized particularly in Britain and the United States by a great increase of dimensions, which is found to promote economy in fuel, etc. In the former country the furnace of the latter part of our century is commonly from 70 to 80 feet high, and some have even been built with a height of more than 100 feet, while in the States the tendency to build very high furnaces is still more marked. A single large furnace may turn out as much as 1,500 tons of pig iron in a week, and some in America, it is said, actually produce as much as 2,500 tons. The more usual output of a blast furnace is however much less than these amounts; but if we say only one-half, or even one-third of these quantities, a state of things is indicated very different from what obtained about 1837, when the best Welsh furnaces produced only 200 tons a week. If we go back to the beginning of the century, the difference is much more marked, for the blast furnaces of that period could turn out only about 30 tons in a week.

The proportions of fuel, ore, and limestone charged into the furnace vary greatly according to the composition of the ore, the quality of iron aimed at, and the practice of each manufacturer. It is usual previously to calcine the carbonate ores and others also, in order to expel the carbonic acid and the moisture, of which last all contain a considerable amount: and sometimes the limestone is mixed with the ore to undergo this preliminary process. The charge being conveyed from the roasting kilns to the blast furnace while still hot effects an obvious economy of fuel in the latter. In the case of hæmatite ore the quantities of materials in one charge may be something like 54 cwt. of ore, 9 cwt. of limestone, and 33 cwt. of coke. It is quite common to use mixtures of different kinds of ore, so as to modify the quality of the product according to particular requirements. The use of the limestone is to take up silica, and the slag is found to consist mainly of silicates of lime and alumina. The amount flowing from a blast furnace of course varies much according to the conditions, and is larger than would commonly be supposed; for the production of one ton of pig iron involves the production of from ½ to 1½ tons of slag.

Fig. [22] represents in section the later type of blast furnace, which of course is circular in plan. Its height may be taken as 80 feet, and the diameter at the widest part of the interior as 22½ feet, narrowed to 20 feet near the top. The lowest portion, C, is called the crucible, the bottom of which is the hearth, both formed of the most refractory materials obtainable. The conical widening, B, above the crucible is the boshes, and at the top is seen the “cup and cone” apparatus already described, A, surmounted by the short cylindrical iron mouth, through apertures in which the charges are tipped from the gallery, D, these having been raised there in small trucks by hydraulic or other elevators. The escaping gases leave the furnace by the exit, E, which leads into the “down-come,” G, and they are conducted from it to the “regenerative stoves” and dealt with as presently to be described. Our section represents the masonry of the furnace as sustained by pillars, P, at the outside of the lower part; these pillars support a strong ring of iron plates upon which the wall rests. This arrangement has the advantage of allowing the workmen the greatest freedom of access to parts about the crucible, which require much attention. Here, at the lowest part, is an aperture from which the liquid iron is allowed to run out every five or six hours, it being plugged in the meantime by clay and sand. The slag being much lighter than the iron, floats above it, and runs off at a higher level over the tympstone. Opening into the hearth are several orifices to admit the hot blast from the nozzles of the tuyères, which of course do not project into the furnace itself; but they are so near to the region of intensest heat that they would be rapidly destroyed unless they were surrounded by a casing through which a current of water is constantly running. The tuyères, of which there may be 3 or 5, are supplied from the pipe seen at K. The earlier plans of heating the air did not permit of a very high temperature being given to the hot blast, about 600° F. being the limit; but the “regenerative” stoves can supply a blast of more than 1,600° F., or not far below the melting point of silver. Another great increase has been in the pressure of the blast; 2 or 3 lbs. per square inch sufficed in the earlier practice; but the lofty modern furnaces have to be supplied with the blast at a pressure of 10 lbs. per square inch, and over. Even when comparatively low pressures were the rule, a large ironworks required much blowing power. The works formerly at Dowlais, in South Wales, for instance, had an engine of 650 horse-power for the blowing engine, in which a piston of 12 feet diameter moved in a cylinder 12 feet in length. The quantity of air that passes into a blast furnace amounts to thousands of tons per week, its weight being much greater than that of all the ore, coke, and limestone put together.