Regenerative Furnace Research Articles

Calendar of Discovery and Invention

April 10, 1864.—The modern process of manufacturing open hearth steel was started by PierreEmile Martin, who melted together pig-iron, scrap, and iron ore in a Siemen's regenerative furnace. Martin's French patent was taken out on April 10, 1864. Two hundred years ago, R6aumur described the conversion of wrought iron into steel by fusing it with pig-iron, but his experiments never went beyond the laboratory stage. The open hearth process was introduced into America in 1868. In 1880 that country produced 1,074,000 tons of Bessemer steel, and 110,000 tons of open hearth steel. Forty years later these figures had increased to 8,883,000 tons of Bessemer steel, and 32,672,000 tons of open hearth steel, the total production being nearly equal to half a ton of steel per head of population.

Calendar of Industrial Pioneers

November 19, 1883. Sir William Siemens died.One of four brothers who were all closely associated with the application of science and the management of great industrial concerns, Siemens was born in Lenthe, Hanover, on April 4, I823. He settled in England in 1844 and in 1859 became a naturalised British citizen. His name is connected with the introduction of the regenerative furnace for steelmaking and the enunciation of the principle of the modern dynamo. He designed the cable ship Faraday, and was president of various technical institutions.

Chemical Technology; or, Chemistry in its Applications to Arts and Manufactures

THIS, the third volume of a well-known work on chemical technology, gives a history of the manufacture of gas and its application to the purposes of illumination. After a short historical introduction, about three-quarters of the remainder of the book is occupied with a description of the mode of manufacture, purification and distribution of coal gas as carried out in this country. The consideration of gas burners then takes some fifty pages, the questions of the testing, analysis and determination of the heat of combustion of gas occupying about twenty pages. The apparatus used in the manufacture of coal gas is described in great detail, chapters being devoted to the construction and use of retorts, furnaces (several regenerative furnaces being described in this section), stoking machinery, condensers and scrubbers, purifiers, the measurement and storage of gas—the numerous forms of gasholders being very fully given—governors, distributing mains and pipes, and gas meters.

The Circulation of Organic Matter

AT the evening meeting of the Royal Institution on Friday, April 24, Dr. G. V. Poore gave a discourse on the circulation of organic matter. Without attempting to define “organic matter,” Dr. Poore began by saying that all organic matter was combustible, and that all our combustibles were of organic origin. A comparison was made between combustion in a furnace and the combustion of food in the body of an animal, and it was shown that whereas in the furnace the fuel was used up and furnace wore out, in the animal there was increase of size, while its droppings stimulate the soil to an increased production of food. This apparent increase was probably due to the holding in suspension by the extra growth of plants of both water and soluble salts, which otherwise would percolate the soil. and find their way to the sea. Recent experiments made it certain, also, that some of the atmospheric nitrogen was appropriated by microbes in the soil. The animal was a true regenerative furnace, and led to the increase of the herbage at the expense of the sea on the one hand, and the atmosphere on the other. It was impossible to imagine an increase in one direction without some compensating decrease in another direction. When organic matter collected under water, fermentations were set up, and the organic matter was reduced instead of being oxidised. The tendency of organic matter, when thus treated, to form combustible bodies was very remarkable. The inflammable gases which sometimes formed in cesspools, and the marsh gas evolved by mud in ponds and rivers, were familiar examples, as were also the alcohols formed by the fermentation of carbohydrates. Our immense stores of coal and peat were due to the silting up of marsh plants in past ages and in recent times, and so-called mineral oils were certainly of organic origin, as were also the nitrates which were so much used in the manufacture of explosives. If we were to judge what has been by what is, it was impossible not to come to the conclusion that life must have preceded combustion in this world. This biological theory of the cosmogony made the world subject, like all other things, to the processes of development, evolution and decay, and he believed, that such a theory had fewer drawbacks than might at first sight appear.

A New Method of Heating in the Regenerative Gas Furnace

DURING the present age, which may be called that of Electricity, the sister science of Heat is not receiving so much attention at the hands of the natural philosopher as it did formerly. But still there remain some scientific men who are giving a life-long attention to it—MM. Hirn and Berthelot in France, Herren Clausius, Helm-holtz, and Frederick Siemens in Germany, Mr. Joule and Sir William Thomson in this country. During the late Sir William Siemens's lifetime, the one brother, worked here in the science of Heat, the other in Germany, and the work of both was applied everywhere; now Mr. Frederick Siemens works alone, and, from the recent evidence of that work, it promises to play an important part in the economical application of fuel. Mr. F. Siemens has recently had an opportunity given him of bringing his views forward in this country, having read a paper at the Chester meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute on a new method of heating in the regenerative gas furnace, in which he treated the practical side of the question, whilst in the discussion of the same paper he gave his views on the theory of the subject. Mr. F. Siemens's investigations have led him to the conclusion that combustion can only be perfect, and be maintained perfect, if the space in which it takes place is sufficiently large to allow the gases to combine out of contact with solid materials. Having proved by actual experiment that solid substances interfere with the formation of flame and that flame injures solid substances with which it comes in contact, he brings forward an hypothesis to account for the phenomena. According to the electrical hypothesis, which Mr. Siemens prefers, flame is the result of an infinite number of exceedingly minute electrical flashes, the flashes being due to the exceedingly swift motion of gaseous particles, and a solid body which opposes itself to these flashes is cut by them, whilst, the motion being more or less arrested by the solid body, the flame is damped.

XXXIII.—On the regenerative gas furnace as applied to the manufacture of cast steel

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