Iron bloomery

Iron) direct-process slag, -herd, m. Renofeuer. -schiacke, /. — Renofeuer-schlacke. -Stahl, m. steel made directly from the ore, natural steel, bloomery iron, -tier, n. reindeer, -verfahren, n. (Iron) direct process. 

Sintering processes have been used since antiquity to alter the properties of ores and ore concentrates, powdered metals and alloys such as bloomery iron, ceramics, and glass. Bloomery iron, for example, was sintered in a forge, and the operation was often referred to as forge sintering. 

Bloomery iron is characterized, however, by very low carbon content (Table 1) and if one wished to carry out a conventional carbon 14 dating, consumption of the entire 20 lb. bloom would have yielded only 4 or 5 grams of carbon, which is barely enough. For this reason, the Conservation-Analytical Laboratory of the Smithsonian Institution sponsored the development of the micro-scale dating procedures at Brookhaven Laboratory already referred to above [9,10]. 

Luppe,/. Metal.) bloom, loop, lump, ball. Luppen-eisen, n. ball iron, puddled iron, -frischfeuer, n. bloomery fire, -frischbtitte, /. bloomery. -stahl, m. bloom steel, steel in blooms. 

Crew, P (2001), Iron in archaeology The European Bloomery smelters by Radomir Pleiner (review article), /. Hist. Metallurgy Soc. 35(2), 99-102. 

Bloomery The earliest process for making iron from iron ore, operated from around 1500 BC until the blast furnace was invented around 1500 AD. The ore is heated with charcoal in a furnace blown by bellows the product, known as bloom, is a composite of iron particles and slag. When this is hammered, the slag is expelled to the surface and a lump of relatively pure iron remains. See also Catalan. 

Heimann, R. B., Kreher, U., Spazier, I., and Wetzel, G. (2001). Mineralogical and chemical investigations of bloomery slags from prehistoric (8th century BC to 4th century AD) iron production sites in upper and lower Lusatia, Germany. Archaeometry 42 227-252. 

Avery, D. (1982), The iron bloomery, in Wertime, T. A. and S. R Wertime (eds.). Early Pyrotechnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. 

Catalan An early iron-making process in which selected ores were reduced with charcoal and the slag was expelled from the product by hammering while hot. See also Bloomery. 

Dating of Bloomery Slag and Iron, Hist. Metall. (1976) 10, 87. 

Reaction (7) occurs higher up the shaft while Reaction (8) nearer the hearth. The end result was a mixture of iron and slag, which was subsequently hammered while hot to produce a bloom of wrought iron. This was called the bloomery process for the production of wrought iron. The wastage of iron was very high with over 70% of available iron lost in the slag. 

Smelting is a method for extracting a pure metal from an ore (an ore is a rock made up of metals and other minerals). In smelting, a chemical transformation may be used to purify the metal by changing the oxidation state of metals in the ore (weTl get into more detail on what an oxidation state is later in the book). The smelting of iron dates back to ca. 1000 B.c.E. (or maybe even earlier), and it typically involves first heating the raw material in a furnace called a bloomery. This produces a soft iron material that can be shaped. A hammer is often used to remove other impurities from the soft metal before allowing it to harden to form a relatively pure form of iron. 

It is estimated that iron constitutes 90% of all applications that involve metals. Hence, it is not surprising that the purification and post-processing for iron is the most widely practiced. The most primitive method that was used in the nineteenth century to purify iron from its ore is called bloomery. This method used pure carlxMi in the form of charcoal to reduce the metal (Eq. 2). In this process, the temperature is... 

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