Blast Furnace Kit.

The blast furnace is the heart of the mill. The constant roar of the blast heating apparatus fills the air; the molten iron boils deep inside the blast furnace 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Every few hours the molten crude iron is tapped and brought by rail to be processed into steel. The actual blast furnace consists of a barrel-shaped upper part, the shaft or stack, and the bottom part, the belly, which is also barrel-shaped. The burden, i.e. the ore, the coke, and, depending on the impurities in the ore, the gangue material, different slag-forming additives (such as limestone) are brought up by conveyor to the top, the so-called throat. The air in the blast heating apparatus is heated to 1,000°-1,300° Celsius and burns the coke into carbon monoxide, the blast furnace gas. The rising blast furnace gas reduces the ore again to molten iron that still has a high carbon content. The blast furnace gas is scrubbed and used to fire the blast heating apparatus. The molten iron collects along with the slag in the lower part, the so-called hearth. There it is tapped, separated from the slag on the work platform in the foundry and fed into the waiting torpedo ladle cars.