History of the iron furnace using the physical-chemical blast furnace model

Abstract

The physical–chemical blast furnace model first built by Michard and Rist has proven to be a very efficient tool to predict and drive the present blast furnaces. It mostly describes the iron blast furnace as a counter current gas-solids dual heat and oxygen exchanger. The onset of coke gasification (orelse of iron oxide direct reduction), leads to a two-zones exchange model. This theory is used to look back at the operation of the earlier and smaller iron furnaces such as the early XIXth century charcoal blast furnace or the much older low shaft furnaces. It shows the interest of using physical-chemical models to better understand the operation of past production tools.