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In a blast furnace, fuel , ores, and flux are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while a hot blast of air (sometimes with oxygen enrichment) is blown into the lower section of the furnace through a series of pipes called tuyeres, so that the chemical reactions take place throughout the furnace as the material falls downward.
These were the invention of the hot blast in iron-smelting and the introduction of the beehive coke oven. The use of a blast of hot air, instead of cold air, in the smelting furnace was first introduced by Neilson in Scotland in 1828. [9] The hearth process of making coke from coal is a very lengthy process. [citation needed]
Coke is used as fuel in a blast furnace. In a continuous process, coke, iron ore, and limestone are mixed together and placed in the top of the blast furnace, and at the bottom liquid iron and waste slag are removed. The raw materials continuously move down the blast furnace.
Blast furnace gas (BFG) [1] is a by-product of blast furnaces that is generated when the iron ore is reduced with coke to metallic iron. It has a very low heating value , about 3.5 MJ/m 3 (93 BTU /cu.ft), [ 2 ] because it consists of about 51 vol% nitrogen and 22 vol% carbon dioxide , which are not flammable.
For blast furnaces, direct reduction corresponds to the reduction of oxides by the carbon in the coke. However, in practice, direct reduction only plays a significant role in the final stage of iron reduction in a blast furnace, by helping to reduce wustite (FeO) to iron. In this case, the chemical reaction can be trivially described as follows ...
The hot blast pumps hot air into the blast furnace. The hot blast temperature ranges from 900 to 1,300 °C (1,650 to 2,370 °F) depending on the design and condition. Oil, tar , natural gas, powdered coal and oxygen can be injected to combine with the coke to release additional energy and increase the percentage of reducing gases present ...
The Chinese are thought to have skipped the bloomery process completely, starting with the blast furnace and the finery forge to produce wrought iron; by the fifth century BC, metalworkers in the southern state of Wu had invented the blast furnace and the means to both cast iron and to decarburize the carbon-rich pig iron produced in a blast ...
The traditional Japanese tatara furnace uses charcoal and ironsand to produce a mixture of iron and steel. Small quantities are still made by the Nittoho Tatara in Japan. The tatara smelting process involves direct reduction and—unlike a blast furnace—at no time is the product fully molten.