Patent GB-111835-A (GB)
Title: Improvements in Apparatus for Electrically Distilling Ores and Metal Bearing Materials.
Inventor: JONES DAVID BENTON
IPC: C22B19/18
Filed: 1917-08-10
Abstract: 111,835. Jones, D. B., (Assignee of Fulton, C. H.). Dec. 7, 1916, [Convention date]. Electrode furnaces. - Apparatus for distilling metals such as zinc from ores &c. comprises a supporting structure containing a passage which connects a condenser to an electric furnace with a bell-shaped removable cover. The furnace is adapted to receive briquettes or the like of mixed ore &c. and a reducing- agent, of such composition as to retain their original form when heated to a distilling temperature by passage of current through them. Such briquettes may be made bv mixing finely ground pitch, ore, and coke, and heating, or by mixing the ore and coke with molten pitch. .The mixture is moulded under high pressure. Two or more furnace bases may be combined in one structure with a condenser D. the number of covers being one less than the number of bases, so that one base is uncovered for re-charging and subsequently receives a hot cover transferred from the next furnace to be re-charged. Means for heating or cooling the condenser D and for heating the bases of the furnaces may be provided. Each furnace cover A may comprise a steel shell which is contracted a little at its lower end to hold a refractory non-conducting lining. An opening in the top of the cover is normally closed by a plate 4. Columns of cylindrical ore briquettes, or solid pillars of the same mixture, say 6ft. in length and 1ft. in diameter, rest on electrodes also of the same composition or of graphite. A wide clearance is allowed between the columns and cover. The electrodes are shown arranged for 3-phase star currents in Fig. 6, connectors of the form shown in Fig. 5 being placed on the tops of the columns. A fire-clay support F made in three sectors 7, Fig. 7, has raised portions for the electrodes, apertures 7a for vapour, and conducting plugs 11. It rests on chequer brickwork based on the inclined roof 9 of a heating-chamber 10. A new furnace is heated slowlv at first. Vapour passes from the furnace to the condenser through passages 14, 16 and an intermediate chamber 15 provided with a tap-hole for liquid zinc. Below this chamber are two combustion furnaces with haffles. Hot air is conveyed from one of these furnaces bv a flue 33 to a chamber 29 below the condenser, and from the other by a flue 34 to the annular heating-chamber 10 below the adjacent electric furnace, and thence into the first flue 33. From the chamber 29 the hot air ascends through a space between coaxial cylinders 20, 21 in the condenser, and escapes through a hole 28 at the ton. Chequer brickwork may be arranged between the cylinders 20, 21. If cooling is requiredair is forced through the same annular space by a fan. The zinc vapour and carbon monoxide pass upwards through the inner cylinder 21 and through a duct 22 to the space between the outer cylinder 20 and the wall of the condenser. In the central space are battles consisting of rectangular slabs spaced by short uprights. The outer condensing space is divided by four steep helical partitions 23, one of which extends completely across the annular space, while the others leave apertures alternately at the top and bottom, in order to direct the vapour in a sinuous path. Specification 106.050 is referred to.