Components: Details
The unwanted remains from heating event carried out in a . This may contain remains of the ore, fuel, and materials intended to be created, and so be specific to a purpose - e.g. or glass production, and to a specific method of production, such as or production of iron.
The specific nature of the activity carried out can be based on the shape of, quantity of, chemical analysis of and distribution of the slag. Sometimes slag will be the most visible sign of that process on the surface - large slag heaps sometimes have a different vegetation cover to that of the surrounding area, but the amount present can vary widely. Sometimes slag was robbed to be down by improved technologies, such as , or for road-metalling and as an addition to fields.
Coal contains large amounts of Sulphur (S). This cannot be used to create as it will cause the metal to become impossible to work. Coke is coal that has been partially heated to drive off the Sulphur. This happened in coke ovens or just in the open, where the burning process could be specifically controlled by covers (sometimes completely) and wetting.
Coke ovens were introduced in 1763AD. These ovens had a chamber filled with coal dust, a chimney and a door that sealed the chamber after staring the burning. The coke was formed by slow, but complete combustion. Removal of the coke was achieved by breaking the seal and using a small crane and scooped shovel. Coke ovens were built in rows, which could be served by . The gases produced could be used elsewhere, such as heating boilers for making steam. The Winfield, (County Durham), coke ovens generated heat for a copper oxide plant specifically built nearby in 1915AD.
Carbon monoxide is widely used in the reduction process; the burning of coke produces the carbon monoxide. On the Moon, on the other hand, many processes such as will yield large quantities of carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide is then used to reduce the ore as follows:
3 Fe2O3 + CO = 2 Fe3O4 + CO
2 Fe3O4 + 2 CO = 6 FeO + 2 CO2
FeO + CO = Fe + CO2
Over the stages of this reaction, the Iron ore is being reduced by the Carbon Monoxide, to form Iron and Carbon Dioxide
Blast furnaces on Earth also include calcium carbonate, which forms calcium oxide to react impurities such as silica and sulphur into slag for easy removal.
The waste CO2 evolved from the reduction of iron now must be recycled. At the end
History
The iron industry began in forested areas since trees were necessary to make the fuel, charcoal. It was cheaper to move iron to the iron works than to move the vast amounts of charcoal needed. When iron working and shipbuilding caused the forests to shrink rapidly, it became necessary to search for an alternative fuel. Smelting iron ore or heating the ore up to melting point made iron. The liquid iron was then cast into ingots, called pigs. The pig iron could then either be reheated until it was molten and cast into moulds, or heated and hammered into bars of wrought iron. Of the two, wrought iron was more malleable and less brittle. Attempts had been made to use coal in the smelting process, but the sulphur in the coal produced an iron, which was too brittle for use.
In 1709, an ironmaster in Coalbrookdale, Abraham Darby I, succeeded in producing cast iron using coal. He discovered a process whereby coal was first turned into coke. When coal is turned into coke most of the sulphur is lost as sulphurous gases. The coke could then be used in the smelting process to produce iron. Darby kept his discovery a secret and passed it on only to the next generation of Darbys. His son, Abraham Darby II, and his grandson, Abraham Darby III, eventually perfected his method.
Because they kept the secret, the idea of smelting iron using coke did not become widespread until the second half of the 18th century. The Darby's method of producing iron could only be used for cast iron. The search was still on for a better and cheaper method of producing both wrought iron and steel. Until that time, steel had been very expensive to produce and its uses were limited.
Charles Bage
Charles Bage designed the Ditherington Flax Mill, in Shropshire.
Ditherington was built in 1796, part of the empire being created by Leeds - based industrialist John Marshall and designed by his business partner Charles Bage. It took over a year to build and was a first in structural engineering; it was the first iron-framed building in the world. It’s the mill's design that makes it such a groundbreaking building, because it was the first building in the world to be constructed around an iron frame. Charles Bage developed a perfectly valid method of designing cast iron beams on the basis of tests and Galileo's bending theory.
(bd2) x (a constant depending on the material)
Where b and d are breadth and depth of section
This system was later taken up and employed to construct tall buildings all over the world. Essentially this structure represents the birth of the skyscraper, most notably adopted during the reconstruction of Chicago almost a century later.
