Hot Blast
The efficiency of the blast furnace was improved by the change to hot blast, patented by James Beaumont Neilson in Scotland in 1828. This further reduced production costs. Within a few decades, the practice was to have a 'stove' as large as the furnace next to it into which the waste gas (containing CO) from the furnace was directed and burnt. The resultant heat was used to preheat the air blown into the furnace.
Read more about this topic: History Of Ferrous Metallurgy
Famous quotes containing the words hot and/or blast:
“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again—and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“... able to
Mend measles, nag noses, blast blisters
And all day waste wordful girls
And war-boys, and all day
Say “Oh God!””
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)