The third photo is a bit of a puzzler - it certainly does not look like a
run of the mill reverberatory furnace.
1. The air main running horizontally across the middle has ten swan
necks coming from it leading to what appear to be tuyeres.
2. There apperas to be a brick shaft above the middle decking and a
water-jacketed shaft with the tuyeres below. The multiplicity of pipes at
both ends discharges into tundishes, one of which can be seen on the right.
The usual arrangement is to pump cold water to the bottom of the jackets
and take warm water off through the pies at the top. The tundishes direct
the warm water through pumps to the cooling system, which may be the
heat-exchanger shown in photo 1.
3. The furnace then appears to deliver to a semicircular or half-oval
shaped forhearth. The upper tapping run to the right delivers to a line of
waiting wagons and the lower, larger run into a pit. This looks like a
granulating pit, which would be full of water, very deep and emptied by
crane.
There the puzzle starts because this description would suggest a
blast-furnace rather than a reverb. However, given the limitations of the
photograph, I would have expected to see evidence of an off-take for flue
gases high up on the shaft - it may have been taken off for repairs and
also some sort of charging arrangements, although these may have been on
the middle deck. The open door lower right suggests that the furnace
shown here is attached to a reverberatory furnace to which the second set
of rails runs.
Putting all that together I guess that this was used to produce copper
shot, using a granulating system similar to that used at McKechnie's and
Capper Pass in the UK and that refining slag was run off into the trucks on
the right of the forehearth. With a fine stream of copper this is not as
dodgy as it sounds, although the water has to be very deep.
The railtrack on the far right was used to gain acces to the reverberatory
part and possibly to insert a pole for refining. All of this could have
been charged with molten feed from the furnace shown tapping on the extreme
left. The tuyeres would have been used to oxidise traces of iron and to
convert these to a silicate slag. They would also remove traces of
sulphur. The feed for the reverberatory furnace would be fairly pure
copper, probably about 98-99%Cu with Fe and S as the main impurities.
The furnace looks to be under maintenance as the larger launder is not
lined and would have buckled if used like that for any length of time.
There also appears to be some sort of crane above the shaft.
That's the theory, if anyone really knows what it was all about, I would
very much like to know.
Richard Smith
3M UK Bracknell,
Environment, Safety and Security [log in to unmask]
Tel: 01344-858154 (Trim. 8-230-2154)
Fax: 01344-858367 (Trim. 8-230-2367)
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