Furnace charcoal blast

Coke first used instead of charcoal in a blast furnace. 

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. 

Once the volatile prodiicts have been pyrolyzed, one is left with a material that is mostly carbon, and these are called coke (from coal) and charcoal (from wood). Coke was of course used in blast furnaces to make iron (the volatiles would make the process less reproducible in reducing Fc203) by our ancestors, while charcoal was used in soap (mainly the alkalis in the ash) and as an adsorbent. 

In 17 6 the wood-charcoal. process, was pll but entirely given, up, and the gross produce.of one hundred and, twenty-one blast furnaces,, was. one hundred. and twenty-four. thousand eight hundred and Bcveptyroine tons, being near to twenty tons weekly for each furnace and in ten years after this, 1806, there were two hundred and twenty-seven blast fiirnaces in this country, one hundred and fifty-nine of which were in active blast at once, and produced two hundred and fifty thousand tons of iron. 

At present this method is excluded by a more economical process of methane reforming (considered in Section XIV). The exhaustion of natural gas resources may, however, restore the importance of coal gasification. In addition, reaction (377) is a constituent part of the blast furnace process. Reaction (378) is employed in the production of activated charcoal. 

Svartkrut (BlkPdr). For most types of Swedish BlkPdr, the compn falls within the following limits K nitrate 74—78, charcoal 12-15, and sulfur 10—12%. For different grades of BlkPdr, charcoals of different origins and methods of prepn are used. Powders used in shotgun shells contain charcoal from black alder carbonized in furnaces ordinary powders use charcoal made of birch, alder, willow or linden and Blasting... 

Towards the close of the eighteenth century there was considerable improvement in the trade m other parts of the country, for coke was now being used. In 1790 England possessed no fewer than 81 coke and 25 charcoal furnaces. In 1917 the total number of blast furnaces was 496, and of these an average of 324 were in blast at any moment during the year. The enormous growth in the output of pig iron since 1740 is well illustrated by the following table. 

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