heat of the body of flame issuing through the fire arch by a passage to which the air has free access. The material to be melted is introduced into the furnace from the hoppers HH through the charging holes in the roof. When melted the products separate on the bed (which is made of closely packed sand or other infusible substances), according to their density; the lighter earthy matters forming an upper layer of slag are drawn out by the slag hole K at the flue end into an iron wagon or bogie, while the metal subsides to the bottom of the bed, and at the termination of the operation is run out by the tap hole L into moulds or granulated into water. The opposite opening M is the working door, through which the tool for stirring the charge is introduced. It is covered by a plate suspended to a lever, similar to that seen in the end elevation (fig. 4) in front of the slag hole.
According to the purposes to which they are applied, reverberatory furnaces may be classed into two groups, namely, fusion or melting furnaces, and calcining or wasting furnaces, also called calciners. The former have a very extended application in many branches of industry, being used by both founders and smelters in the fusion of metals; in the concentration of poor metallic compounds by fusion into regulus; in the reduction of lead and tin ores; for refining copper and silver; and for making malleable iron by the puddling processes and welding. Calcining furnaces have a less extended application, being chiefly employed in the conversion of metallic sulphides into oxides by continued exposure to the action of air at a temperature far below that of fusion, or into chlorides by roasting with common salt. As some of these substances (for example, lead sulphide and copper pyrites) are readily fusible when first heated, but become more refractory as part of the sulphur is dissipated and oxygen takes its place, it is important that the heat should be very carefully regulated at first, otherwise the mass may become clotted or fritted together, and the oxidizing effect of the air soon ceases unless the fritted masses be broken small again. This is generally done by making the bed of the furnace very long in proportion to its breadth and to the fire-grate area, which may be the more easily done as a not inconsiderable amount of heat is given out during the oxidation of the ore—such increased length being often obtained by placing two or even three working beds one above the other, and allowing the flame to pass over them in order from below upwards. Such calciners are used especially in roasting zinc blende into zinc oxide, and in the conversion of copper sulphides into chlorides in the wet extraction process. In some processes of lead-smelting, where the minerals treated contain sand, the long calciner is provided with a melting bottom close to the fire-place, so that the desulphurized ore leaves the furnace as a glassy slag or silicate, which is subsequently reduced to the metallic state by fusion with fluxes in blast furnaces. Reverberatory furnaces play an important part in the manufacture of sodium carbonate; descriptions and illustrations are given in the article Alkali Manufacture.
Muffle, Crucible and Retort Furnaces.—A third class of furnaces is so arranged that the work is done by indirect heating; that is, the material under treatment, whether subjected to calcination, fusion or any other process, is not brought in contact either with fuel or flame, but is raised to the proper temperature by exposure in a chamber heated externally by the products of combustion. These are known as muffle or chamber furnaces; and by supposing the crucibles or retorts to represent similar chambers of only temporary duration, the ordinary pot melting air furnaces, and those for the reduction of zinc ores or the manufacture of coal gas, may be included in the same category. These are almost invariably air furnaces, though sometimes air under pressure is used, as, for example, in the combustion of small anthracitic coal, where a current of air from a fan-blower is sometimes blown under the grate to promote combustion. Types of muffle furnaces are figured in the article Annealing, Hardening and Tempering.
Furnace Materials.—The materials used in the construction of furnaces are divisible into two classes, namely, ordinary and refractory or fire-resisting. The former are used principally as casing, walls, pillars or other supporting parts of the structure, and includes ordinary red or yellow bricks, clay-slate, granite and most building stones; the latter are reserved for the parts immediately in contact with the fuel and flame, such as the lining of the fire-place, the arches, roof and flues, the lower part if not the whole of the chimney lining in reverberatory furnaces, and the whole of the internal walls of blast furnaces. Among such substances are fireclay and firebricks, certain sandstones, silica in the form of ganister, and Dinas stone and bricks, ferric oxide and alumina, carbon (as coke and graphite), magnesia, lime and chromium oxide—their relative importance being indicated by their order, the last two or three indeed being only of limited use.
The most essential point in good fireclays, or in the bricks or other objects made from them, is the power of resisting fusion at the highest heat to which they may be exposed. This supposes them to be free from metallic oxides forming easily fusible compounds with silica, such as lime or iron, the presence of the former even in comparatively small proportion being very detrimental. As clays they must be sufficiently plastic to be readily moulded, but at the same time possess sufficient stiffness not to contract too strongly in drying, whereby the objects produced would be liable to be warped or cracked before firing. In most cases, however, the latter tendency is guarded against, in making up the paste for moulding, by adding to the fresh clay a certain proportion of burnt material of the same kind, such as old bricks or potsherds, ground to a coarse powder. Coke dust or graphite is used for the same purpose in crucible making (see Firebrick).
The most highly valued fireclays are derived from the Coal Measures. Among the chief localities are the neighbourhood of Stourbridge in Worcestershire and Stannington near Sheffield, which supply most of the materials for crucibles used in steel and brass melting, and the pots for glass houses; Newcastle-on-Tyne and Glenboig near Glasgow, where heavy blast furnace and other firebricks, gas retorts, &c., are made in large quantities. Coarse-grained but very strong firebricks are also made of the waste of china clay works.
In Belgium the clay raised at Andenne is very largely used for making retorts for zinc furnaces. The principal French fireclays are derived from the Tertiary strata in the south, and more nearly resemble porcelain clays than those of the Coal Measures. They give wares of remarkably fine texture and surface, combined with high refractory character.
In Germany, Ips and Passau on the Danube, and Gross Almerode in Hesse, are the best known localities producing fireclay goods, the crucibles from the last-mentioned place, known as Hessian crucibles, going all over the world. These, though not showing a great resistance to extreme heat, are very slightly affected by sudden alternations in heating, as they may be plunged cold into a strongly heated furnace without cracking, a treatment to which French and Stourbridge pots cannot be subjected with safety.
Plumbago or graphite is largely used in the production of crucibles, not in the pure state but in admixture with fireclay; the proportion of the former varies with the quality from 25 to nearly 50%. These are the most enduring of all crucibles, the best lasting out 70 or 80 meltings in brass foundries, about 50 with bronze, and 8 to 10 in steel-melting.
Silica is used in furnace-building in the forms of sand, ganister, a finely ground sandstone from the Coal Measures of Yorkshire, and the analogous substance known as Dinas clay, which is really nearly pure silica, containing at most about 212% of bases. Dinas clay is found at various places in the Vale of Neath in South Wales, in the form of a loose disintegrated sandstone, which is crushed between rollers, mixed with about 1% of lime, and moulded into bricks that are fired in kilns at a very high temperature. These bricks are specially used for the roof, fire arches, and other parts subjected to intense heat in reverberatory steel-melting furnaces, and, although infusible under ordinary conditions, are often fairly melted by the heat without fluxing or corrosion after a certain amount of exposure. Ganister, a slightly plastic siliceous sand, is similarly used for the lining of Bessemer steel converters; it is found in the neighbourhood of Sheffield.
Alumina as a refractory material is chiefly used in the form of bauxite, but its applications are somewhat special. It has been found to stand well for the linings of rotatory puddling furnaces, where, under long-continued heating, it changes into a substance as hard and infusible as natural emery. In the
