Reverberator furnaces

Reverberator Furnace. Using a reverberatory furnace, a fine particle feed can be used, the antimony content can be controlled, and batch operations can be carried out when the supply of scrap material is limited. However, the antimony-rich slags formed must be reduced in a blast furnace to recover the contained antimony and lead. For treating battery scrap, the reverberatory furnace serves as a large melting faciUty where the metallic components are hquefted and the oxides and sulfate in the filler material are concurrently reduced to lead metal and the antimony is oxidized. The furnace products are antimony-rich (5 to 9%) slag and low antimony (less than 1%) lead. 

Reusse, m. Russian, reverberieren, v.t. reverberate. Reverberier-ofen, m., -feuer, n. reverberatory furnace, reverberatory, reversibel, a. reversible. 

The Tui-.mace.—Three kinds of furnaces are used by lead smelters. In England and Wales the reverberate ry form is exclusively employed, and no other affords more rapid results the Scotch Fumacehon been adopted at Alston Moors, and in some places on the Continent and the high or tuyere furnace is employed where the ore is refractory or fuel is scarce. /... 

REVERBERATIO CLAUSA — Close Reverberation takes place when Bodies are Calcined by Reverberation in a Sealed Reverberating Furnace. By this process, the fire can be graduated to a nicety, which is not possible in the vulgar way. 

REVERBERATIO APERTA — Open Reverberation is when the Matter is Calcined in a Reverberating Furnace with all the Shafts and Doors open. This species of Reverberation is very powerful, and is used for hard bodies which are not easily dissolved. 

If a very slow current of silicon tetrachloride, SiCl, is passed over silicon at 1200 in a reverberating furnace, kept quite fixed at this temperature, it is noticed that after a certain time silicon has been carried by apparent volatilization into the moderately warm region of the tube, whose temperature is comprised between 500 and 800. In reality, by the action of the silicon tetrachloride on silioon, there is formed silicon trichloride, Si Cle, volatile at these temperatures, which a sudden cooling would allow to be collected, but which, as we have seen, completely decomposes at temperatures included between 700 and 800 . 

What became known as the Leblanc process was actually several interrelated processes. Salt was first reacted with sulphuric acid in a cast-iron pan, then in a reverberator furnace (in which heat was apphed from a flame blown from a separate chamber, not in direct contact with the salt), to produce saltcake (sodium sulphate), with hydrochloric acid released as a waste gas. Saltcake was used to make sodium carbonate, or roasted with limestone (calcium carbonate) and coal or coke to produce black ash. This mixture of sodium carbonate, calcium sulphide, sodium sulphide, hme, salt, carbon, and ash could be treated further with hot water to produce impure sodium carbonate in solution, evaporated into soda crystals (washing soda), or heated to yield anhydrous sodium carbonate. The latter, in turn, could be reacted with lime to made caustic soda (sodium hydroxide), the strongest commercial alkali then available. 

The term reverberatory originated because the thermal radiation seemed to vibrate, reflect, bounce, or reverberate around the inside of the furnace. Radiation is a vibrating wave phenomenon, but it does not cause noise as reverberatory may imply. Maybe Granddad s burner was unstable and therefore noisy, especially with the echo effect of the then-typical high roof (crown), which was probably built that way for easy access by humans for loading or for making repairs. 

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