Improved Mode and Manner of Preparing Materials for Carrying out the Operations of Smelting and the like.
Year: 1888

page_text: Date of Application, 29th Nov., 1888
Complete Specification Left, 28th Aug., 1889-Accepted, 5th Oct., 1889
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION
An Improved Mode and Manner of Preparing Materials for Carrying
out the Operations of Smelting and the like.
I, ROBERT MIDDLETON, of Sheepscar Foundry, Leeds, Yorkshire, Engineer, do
hereby declare the nature of this invention to be as follows:-
This invention refers, generally, to using up, (1) small fuel, such as coke dust, coa!
dust, and the like; (2) small or dust-like ores; (3) small or dust-like fluxes; and (4)
thoroughly intermixing therein and amongst the various particles such purifying or
enriching materials, or their equivalents, as it may be desired to bring into close
contact with one or other of the various elements when under heat in the furnace.
Nevertheless any size or class of ore or other materials may be used-such as may be
submitted to the necessary preparatory processes.
The objects of my invention are as follows; all or any of which may be aimed at ;-
according to circumstances.
(1) To use up in the best possible manner materials otherwise useless, or semi-
useless.
(2) To make such take up a form which will allow free play for the flames and hot
gases throughout the furnace.
(3) To give to the materials a sufficient strength to bear the burden of the furnace
load.
(4) To bring into closer contact in the furnace such elements as have an affinity for
one another which might otherwise be more or less wasted or dissipated if apart.
(5) To obtain an even distribution of the best proportions of the various materials
throughout the furnace; with a view to a more uniform production, or to a greater
economy.
I carry out my object as follows:-I granulate all the material such as is not already
of a suitable size or condition for passing through compressing machinery: 1 then
carefully proportion out and mix the fuel and the ore, adding thereto (if required) a
suitable flux, and carefully intermix amongst the whole the special refining, purifying,
or enriching agents such as the circumstances or the ore may require.
This compound has now to be made up into blocks, and powerfully compressed into
a hard and firm material; and in order to render it sufficiently cohesive I add a
binding or agglomerating material, either just before it is compressed, or previously,
as the circumstances or the nature of the binding material may require or render
advisable.
The blocks may then be stacked or sent direct to the furnace.
Machinery now exists such as would well & sufficiently deal with the compound
material, so there is no need to describe it here.
Datel this T sighth day of November 1888
COMPLETE SPECIFICATION.
An Improved Mode and Manner of Preparing Materials for Carrying
out the Operations of Smelting and the like.
I, ROBERT MIDDLETON, of Sheepscar Foundry, Leeds, Yorkshire, Engineer, do
hereby declare the nature of this invention and in what manner the same is to be
performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and by the following
statement:
This invention refers, generally, to using up, (1.) small fuel, such as cokedust, coal-
dust, and the like; (2.) small or dust-like ores; (3.) small or dust-like fluxes; and

page_text: .
(4.) thoroughly intermixing therein and amongst the various particles such purifying
or enriching materials, or their equivalents, as it may be desired to bring into close
contact with one or other of the various elements when under heat in the furnace.
Nevertheless any size or class of ore or other material may be used-such as may be
submitted to the necessary preparatory process of granulating, or the like.
P
The objects of my invention are as follows; all or any of which may be aimed at :-
according to circumstances.
(1.) To use up in the best possible manner materials otherwise useless-or more or
less so.
(2.) To make such materials take a form which will allow free play for the flames
and hot gases throughout the furnace.
(3.) To give to the materials a sufficient strength to bear the burden of the furnace
load.
(4.) To bring into closer contact in the furnace such elements as have an affinity for,
or an effect on, one another, whose virtues might otherwise be more or less wasted or
dissipated if apart; or which, if apart, might influence prejudicially the production of
the furnace.
(5.) To obtain an even distribution of the best proportions of the various materials
throughout the furnace; with a view to a more uniform production, and to a greater
economy.
I carry out my object as follows:-I granulate or pulverise all the material such
as is not already of a suitable size or condition for passing through compressing
machinery. I then carefully proportion out and mix the fuel and the ore, adding
thereto (if required) a suitable flux, and carefully intermix amongst the whole the
special refining, purifying, or enriching agents. such as the circumstances or the ore
may require.
This compound has now to be made up into blocks, and powerfully compressed into
a hard and firm material; and in order to render it sufficiently cohesive I add a
binding or agglomerating material either just before it is compressed, or previously,
as the circumstances or the nature of the binding material may require or render
advisable. The blocks may then be stacked for future use or sent direct to the
furnace.
As an example of the various proportions this may be taken as a guide. Ore 48%;
Enriching ore, or other agent 8%; Fluxing Agent 13 %; Fuel 25 %; Pitch 6%;
total 100.
Machinery now exists such as would well and sufficiently deal with the compound
material so there is no need to describe it here; but it may be pointed out that blocks
powerfully compressed from both sides simultaneously and which have all their corners
and edges rounded off whilst under heavy pressure-as accomplished under the Patents
of Yeadon & Middleton, No. 13064 & 13067 of 1885; and No. 1013 of 1887, are well
suited for the work. Such blocks may be solid or perforated according to the
requirements of the case. Such blocks may be of any shape-probably those
approaching a cube may prove strongest and therefore most likely to bear the heaviest
furnace-burdens. Globular blocks are unsuitable for stacking so I do not recommend
them where this may be necessary.
Patent No. 3058 of 1886,-Yeadon & Middleton, sets forth a class of Automatio
mixing machinery which would adapt itself to any requirements in the way of pro-
portionate mixing of the materials.
It must be understood that a satisfactory block for a furnace with a heavy burden
can only be produced under very heavy compression say, for instance, with not less
than 2 tons on each sq. inch of the ram surfaces.
In preparing Compound Briquettes for smelting in a Blast-furnace the proportions of
the several materials, ore, flux, fuel, and enriching ore, or other such, will obviously.
vary so much with the nature of the ore, or ores, and with the quality of each of the
other items, and with the temperature & volumn of the blast, that the best and proper
ratio of each material must be separately determined for each furnace and locality,
'keeping in view the purpose for which the metal is required.

page_text: For instance, it is well known that by judiciously blending certain ores a "self-
fluxing" mixture may be got. My Compound Briquette would lend itself to this in
an admirable manner.
66
Again, the smelting of poorer iron ores is often advantageously carried on side by
side with that of a small proportion of red honatite: again, for the manufacture of
Spiegeleisen" (a pig iron rich in manganese) brown honatite is added to roasted
spathic ore: Any such mixtures could well be made up with the fuel dust &c., in the
form of Compound Briquettes.
Where bituminous-coal has been used instead of coke for Blast-furnace work the
tendency of such coal to cake and collect into lumps has frequently given trouble but
in a Compound Briquette this evil is satisfactorily avoided by reason of other substances
separating the particles of coal.
The value of calcining many ores is well known as it leaves them in a more or less
porous condition and therefore more ready to be acted upon by the gases of the
furnace-but such calcining has always to be stopped before the material falls to dust
because it would then be unsuitable for the Blast-furnace. Such ores, however, as
would thus calcine to powder would be most suitable for Compound Briquettes, and the
calcining could then be carried to any extent.
The invention is best suited, of course to ores that require little or no mechanical
pulverising-especially such for example as take the form of sand or the like. Certain
sand-iron sand for instance-has been reduced, in "openhearthed" furnaces, in the
past, with a limited amount of success, but these very ores would when worked up in
a Compound Briquette be easily dealt with in a Blast-furnace.
Another advantage would ensue with the Compound Briquettes when it was desired
to produce an alloy at once (i.e. at the first melting) from the ores in a furnace, by
mixing the special ores beforehand in suitable proportions.
Having now particularly described and ascertained the nature of my said inven-
tion and in what manner the same is to be performed I declare that what I
claim is:-
(1.) The process or improved mode or manner of preparing materials for carrying
out the operations of smelting and the like; consisting of mixing iron sand, dust-like,
granulated, or pulverised, ores, along with fuels, fluxes, and enriching, or other
equivalent purifying, materials, together with an agglomerant, into a compound mass,
all carefully proportioned by automatic mixing machinery; after which the said com-
pound is passed through other machinery capable of moulding the same under specially
heavy pressure into blocks which are both sufficiently cohesive to withstand a heavy
furnace burden and at the same time are weatherproof and therefore incapable of
deteriorating (if stacked previous to use) and likewise incapable of absorbing moisture
and introducing the same into the furnace; each such block thus containing within
itself (and that in an air-tight case as it were) all the necessary ingredients for its
combustion and for the satisfactory reduction of the ore contained therein; substantially
as described herein, with the objects and for the purposes set forth.
Dated this 27th day of Anonst. 1889.
WM. SNOWDON,
9, Beckett's Bank Chambers, Leeds, Yorks., Agent for the Applicant.