A Volume Regulator for Blast-Furnace Engines
Authors: Loewenstein L. C. 
Published: December 2023

Blast-furnace operation has attained a high degree of refinement in the proportioning of the various materials composing the charge — the ore, the fuel and the flux. The weight of oxygen — introduced as atmospheric air — per charge has, however, until recently been subject to much uncertainty due primarily to the difficulty of measuring with any degree of accuracy the volume of air delivered. The adjustment of the air supply to the furnace was, therefore, usually made only when the operator found evidence that the furnace was badly overblown or underblown, a process which resulted in a more-or-less variable product and certainly in a reduction in the possible maximum output of the furnace.

With the advent of the centrifugal compressor giving a perfectly steady air blast, the metering of the air supply became more practical and, therefore, more usual. With perfectly definite and uniform charging a definite and uniform weight of air per minute is desirable. Constant-volume governors have been designed on two principles, one by metering the air by means of a venturi meter and the other by using an impact float. The venturi-meter governing has been improved by using a multiple venturi meter in which large pressure drop can be obtained in the throat without a corresponding loss in power. This difference in pressure is used on a mercury pot whose motion up and down is translated to the governing mechanism of the driver of the air compressor. The proper setting of this meter is accomplished by changing the tension of the spring until a scale calibrated in cubic feet of air per minute shows that the desired quantity of air is obtained.

In the impact float method the air is taken through a conical opening in which is suspended a float, this float moving a horizontal beam about a pivot. The horizontal beam actuates the governing mechanism of the driver of the air compressor. On this horizontal beam is a sliding weight which can be set at calibrated marks representing cubic feet of free air per minute. With the weight set in a definite position a certain definite quantity of air is obtained.

In both of these methods, however, the readings on the calibrated scale are only correct when the initial air conditions are standard, that is, are similar in barometer, temperature and humidity to which the scale has been calibrated. Any change in either the temperature of the inlet air or in the atmospheric barometer or in the humidity of the air, changes the weight of the air metered, and, therefore, its oxygen content. As the blast furnace requires an exact weight of oxygen, the above method of holding constant volume is liable, in extreme cases, to have an error of from 15 to 20 per cent.

A volume corrector is herewith presented which when used in connection with the air-metering device will correct for any changes in either temperature, barometer and humidity, so that the air supplied to a blast furnace will, at all times, under any atmospheric conditions, deliver a perfectly definite and predetermined weight of oxygen to the blast furnace. This volume corrector is so designed that it requires only one setting for each correction, that is, one setting for any initial temperature, one setting for any existing barometer and one setting for humidity as usually obtained by the difference of readings on a wet- and dry-bulb thermometer.