A furnace is a device used for heating. The name derives from Latin fornax, oven.
In American English and Canadian English usage, the term furnace on its own refers to the household heating systems based on a central furnace (known either as a boiler or a heater in British English), and sometimes as a synonym for kiln, a device used in the production of ceramics. In British English, a furnace is an industrial furnace used for many things, such as the extraction of metal from ore (smelting) or in oil refineries and other chemical plants, for example as the heat source for fractional distillation columns.
The term furnace can also refer to a direct fired heater, used in boiler applications in chemical industries or for providing heat to chemical reactions for processes like cracking, and is part of the standard English names for many metallurgical furnaces worldwide.
The heat energy to fuel a furnace may be supplied directly by fuel combustion, by electricity such as the electric arc furnace, or through induction heating in induction furnaces.
Read more about Furnace: Household Furnaces, Metallurgical Furnaces, Industrial Process Furnaces
Famous quotes containing the word furnace:
“What the hammer?What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil?What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“‘Alas!’ quoth he, ‘but newly born in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I.
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel justice layeth on, and mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls;”
—Robert Southwell (1561?–1595)
“A man may take care of a furnace for twenty-five years and still forget to duck his head when he starts going down the cellar stairs.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)