Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Blast Furnace |
Blast FurnaceNoun1. A furnace for smelting of iron from iron oxide ores; combustion is intensified by a blast of air. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
| Domain | Definition |
Metallurgy | Tall, refractory-lined stack-like furnace, mechanically charged and fired on coke for the production of iron from iron ore. Source: European Union. (references) |
Mining | A shaft furnace in which solid fuel is burned with an airblast to smeltore in a continuous operation. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The blast furnace relied on the fact that the unwanted sulfur-iron compounds were lighter than the pure iron and iron-carbon mix, pig iron, that was its main product. The furnace was built in the form of a tall chimney-like cauldron lined with refractory brick. Coke and iron are poured in the top, which would normally burn only on the surface. Air was blown into the middle, thus the "blast", allowing combustion in the middle of the mixture. The results of this localized burning was a liquid that sank to the bottom of the furnace, with the lighter materials on top. A valve was opened to allow the slag to pour out, and once emptired, another valve at the bottom opened to remove the pig iron.
The exact nature of the reaction is:
Fe2O2 + 3 CO => 2 Fe + 3 CO2
Air blown into the furnace reacts with the carbon in the coal to produce carbon monoxide, which then mixes with the iron oxide, reacting chemically to produce pure iron and carbon dioxide, which leaks out of the furnace at the top.
The temperature in the furnace typically runs at about 1500°ree;C, which is enough to also decompose limestone (calcium carbonate) into calcium oxide and additional carbon dioxide:
CaCO3 => CaO + CO2
The calcium oxide reacts with various acidic impurities in the iron (notably silica) and floats with the slag, thereby further purifying the iron.
The pig iron produced by the blast furnace is not very useful directly due to its high carbon content, around 4-5%, making it very brittle. Further processing was needed to reduce the carbon content for use as a construction material. For some time the products of the blast furnace was used almost directly as wrought iron after additional processing, the conversion to steel using the crucible technique was too expensive to operate on a large scale. However with the introduction of the Bessemer process the conversion to steel was also dramatically improved, and by the turn of the late 1800s almost all iron was being converted to steel before use.
The blast furnace remains an important part of modern iron production. Modern furnaces include a heater to pre-heat the blast air to high temperatures in order to avoid cooling (and thus having to re-heat) the mix, and use fairly complex systems to extract the heat from the hot carbon dioxide when it escapes from the top of the furnace, further improving effeciency. The largest blast furnaces produce around 60,000 tonnes of iron per week, enough for about four cars per minute.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Blast furnace."
| Domain | Usage | |
Movie/TV Titles | Tapping a Blast Furnace (1899) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | A Copper blast furnace, Hancock, Mich. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Blast furnace. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Steelworkers at blast furnace, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Tapping a blast furnace, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Steel production. Iron forgery scene. Molten metal running into a ladle from the tapping hole of a blast furnace at a big Eastern steel plant. Republic, Youngstown. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Pouring water on hot ashes from the blast furnace. Bethlehem steel mill, Sparrows Point, Maryland. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Columbia Steel Company at Ironton, Utah. A locomotive outside the blast furnace. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Blast furnace at Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation mill in Etna, Pennsylvania. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Steel mill, Massillon, Ohio. Blast furnace. Credit: Library of Congress. | ||
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Economic History | Brazil | The largest investment projects currently underway in Brazil are: Usinor building a mill for galvanized sheets especially for the automobile industry (US$450 million); CSN building a mill for galvanized steel for the automobile/construction/household appliances market (US$200 million); CSN/Thyssen building a special plant for galvanized steel (US$200 million) and CST building a new blast furnace and expanding its production of slabs by 1.5 million Mtons (US$300 million). (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
Expressions using "blast furnace": blast furnace bottom ♦ blast furnace stove. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
blast furnace | 74 |
blast furnace slag | 4 |
blast furnace picture | 4 |
blast furnace refractories | 3 |
blast furnace gas | 2 |
blast furnace walthers | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "blast furnace"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | furrë martin. (various references) | |
Arabic | أتون صهر المعادن. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | висока пещ, доменна пещ, доменен. (various references) | |
Czech | vysoká pec. (various references) | |
Danish | hoejovn (furnace). (various references) | |
Dutch | oven (furnace, kiln, oven, stove), hoogoven (furnace), HO (furnace). (various references) | |
Finnish | masuuni. (various references) | |
French | haut fourneau. (various references) | |
German | hochofen (furnace). (various references) | |
Greek | υψικάμινος (furnace). (various references) | |
Hungarian | vasolvasztó (iron furnace, iron-smelting works), nagyolvasztó kemence, nagyolvasztó (blast-furnace). (various references) | |
Italian | forno fusorio (melting pot), altoforno (furnace), AFO (furnace), A.F. (furnace). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 溶鉱炉 (smelting furnace). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | "うろ (censer, course, highway, incense burner, Kouro, one's course or path or road, public road, route, run), よう"うろ (smelting furnace). (various references) | |
Manx | furnish-heidee, furnish aer. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | astblay urnacefay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | alto-forno (furnace), alto forno. (various references) | |
Romanian | furnal (furnace, oven), cuptor înalt. (various references) | |
Russian | домна (blastfurnace). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | visokopećni, visoka peć. (various references) | |
Spanish | alto horno (furnace). (various references) | |
Swedish | smältugn (furnace, smelter). (various references) | |
Turkish | yüksek fırın, maden eritme ocağı (smelting furnace). (various references) | |
Welsh | ffwrnais chwythu. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-b-c-e-f-l-n-r-s-t-u" | |
-2 letters: subcentral, trabeculas. | |
-3 letters: ancestral, balancers, barnacles, canulates, flaunters, saturable, scrutable, subaltern, trabecula, ultrasafe, unactable, unstabler. | |
-4 letters: abluents, abreacts, analects, antbears, arbalest, arbuscle, arbutean, asternal, balancer, balances, baluster, barnacle, bearcats, berascal, bracteal, cabarets, cabresta, caesural, canulate, cartable, castable, caterans, causable, centaurs, centrals, claustra, factures, flaneurs, flatcars, flaunter, fractals, funerals, furcates, furnaces, labrusca, lacunars, lacunate. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Quotations: Non-fiction 8. Expressions | 9. Expressions: Internet 10. Translations: Modern 11. Anagrams 12. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
