Papers - New York Meeting – February, 1929 - Gas-solid Contact in the Shaft of a 700-ton Blast Furnace (With Discussion)

The efficient operation of a blast furnace depends primarily upon efficient contact between the descending streail1 of solid materials and the ascending stream of gas. A program of research dealing with the interior of the present-day furnace is being carried by the U. S. Bureau of Mines along two lines: (I) observations on commercial furnaces and (2) experiments in the laboratory. Through the courtesy of the officials of the Illinois Steel Co. it was possible to make a detailed investigation of the interior of the shaft of NO. 4 furnace at the company's South Works, South Chicago, Ill. The experimental work is reported in a IT. S. Bureau of Mines bulletin' which will include the results of several thousand observations on the interior of the shaft of this furnace. Such of the data as are presented later in this paper constitute only a brief summary. The second part of the work has been conducted in the laboratory. Only one phase of the laboratory investigation has been completed at the present time, namely, the flow of gases through beds of broken solids." The object of this papcr is to correlate the results of the two different lines of research and to present a. more or less complete picture of the condition of the interior of a blast furnace by giving approximate, quantitative data of the actual size-distribution of solid particles in a typical furnncc, and of the efficiency of contact between the gas and solid phases. With such data before him the operator or the experimenter not only has a much better idea of the actunl conditions inside a furnace, hut he also knows in what direction to look for possible improvement. The discussion which follows presents only a few of the items studied and reported; those persons who are particularly interested in all the result's of this investigation must refer to the aforementioned publication.