โ Scribed by Bradley Stoughton
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The basic open hearth furnace, the world's greatest steel producer at present, suffers under the disadvantage of greater cost of operation than the Bessemer converter, due chiefly to costs for fuel, labor and repairs. Constant experiments are being made at steel works to reduce these expenses, and the important modifications in design and practice that have resulted are discussed in this paper, together with some reference to the attempts to make low-carbon steel of high quality in the open hearth furnace, and brief notes on the Duplex process.] THE operation of the open hearth furnace (see Fig. I ) is too well known to you to require any description, and I wish to confin~ my attention to-night to recent innovations in furnace design or operation which have fought their way to notice and maintained a position after the test of practical experience.
Fuel.--Producer gas is still the most important fuel used, because it gives more heat units for a dollar than any other manufactured fuel, and it is even increasing over natural gas owing to the diminishing supply of that product in the Pittsburgh district. With coal at two dollars per ton and natural gas at ten cents per thousand cu. ft. the cost as open hearth fuel is approximately the same for the natural and the manufactured product, provided the gas producer plant is large enough to be operated at economical figures. One advantage of natural gas in this comparison is its high calorific power per cu. ft. which enables it to be used without passing through any regenerative chamber.
In England and Europe, where they are more progressive in some departments of the steel industry, or, better say, where they are progressive at an earlier period of development of some improvements in the industry, the use of spare gas from byproduct coke ovens is established in open hearth practice, but some American manufacturers believe that this particular form of progressiveness is still a little premature. Coke oven gas is 47o * From "Album of Drawings Relating to the Manufacture of Open Hearth Steel," by A. Pavloff, St. Petersburg, 19o8.
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