IMPROVEMENTS IN THE TREATMENT OF CONGLOMERATES OF CAST IRON AND OTHER SUBSTANCES, AND IN APPARATUS EMPLOYED FOR THAT PURPOSE
Year: 1869

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Thomas Schoenberger Blair at
the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on
the 10th August 1869.
I, THOMAS SCHOENBERGER BLAIR, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, in the
United States of America, but now residing at the Tavistock Hotel,
Covent Garden, in the County of Middlesex, do hereby declare the
nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN THE TREATMENT OF
CONGLOMERATES OF CAST IRON AND OTHER SUBSTANCES, AND IN APPARATUS EMPLOYED
FOR THAT PURPOSE," to be as follows:-
My Invention relates to the treatment of conglomerates of cast iron
and oxides, carbonaceous or other substances or combinations of such
substances, such as were described in the Specifications to C. D. Abel's
Patents dated respectively the 23rd November 1868, No. 3565, and the
6th May 1869, No. 1391, and in the Provisional Specification to my
application for Letters Patent for an Invention of "Improvements in
the Manufacture of Iron and Steel," bearing equal date herewith.
I have found that such conglomerates or "pig blooms" as they are
termed in the said Specifications are, for reasons herein-after explained,
difficult of management under the methods of treatment hitherto

page_text: employed for converting them into wrought iron, and the object of my
present Invention is to obviate these difficulties by an operation inter-
mediate between the production of the pig bloom and its introduction
into the reverberatory furnace for conversion.
The difficulties referred to may be described as follows:
First. If the pig blooms be charged into the furnace unbroken a con-
siderable amount of labour will be required to break them up in time to
obtain an equable exposure of all the parts to the heat.
Second. If the pig blooms are allowed to remain unbroken the cellular
"or spongy character of the mass renders it a bad conducter of heat, and
a wasteful amount of time is required to bring the interior of each bloom
"" to nature."
Third. If the conglomerate be made in the shape of pig serap or if
the pig blooms be broken up into scrap, and the charge be put into the
reverberatory furnace cold, the furnace bottom is chilled to such an
extent that it does not recover its proper temperature during the
working of the charge, to the great disadvantage of the operation. In
addition to this the workman is obliged to bestow a large amount of
labour on it to keep the colder portion continually turned up from
beneath.
In each of the above methods the chemical operations are with proper
care and skill successfully carried out, and the conglomerate converted
into good wrought iron. The difficulties involved in the treatment
are entirely mechanical, and the purpose of the present Invention is to
supply a mechanical remedy therefor.
My improved process is founded on the fact ascertained by experiment
that the pig bloom is very friable when first raised to a red heat, and
my Invention consists in first raising the pig bloom to such a heat as
will render it friable, and while in that state reducing it to small frag-
ments and introducing it at once before it has time to cool into the
reverberatory furnace. For this purpose I employ a heating furnace so
constructed as to impart the requisite heat to the pig blooms, from
which furnace they are withdrawn consecutively and subjected to the
action of a crushing apparatus which instantly reduces them to scrap,
which again with the least possible loss of heat is charged into the
reverberatory furnace. By this method the workman receives a charge
ready delivered into his furnace requiring no breaking up and very little

page_text: turning over, and which cools the furnace bottom so slightly as not to
retard seriously the working of the charge.
It will be obvious to all skilled in the art that a great variety of forms
and arrangements of furnaces and apparatus for the heating, crushing,
and delivery of the conglomerate may be employed, and it is a great
advantage that these admit of many modifications, as it is thereby rendered
casy to adapt the above process to the limitations of space and the require-
ments of works already constructed.
In the arrangement of apparatus I prefer to employ a heating furnace
or muffle is so constructed that the blooms are charged in at one side
and withdrawn from the other. The heat is admitted through the floor
of the chamber containing the blooms, and these are supported on rails
which leave a space between them and the floor, so that the heat is
applied in such a manner as to require no turning over of the blooms.
They thus require no handling beyond the charging and drawing."
In front of the drawing side of the heating chamber is set a crushing
machine, (which may consist of either one or more pairs of rolls, or of
a stone crusher, or of any similar suitable machine of known con-
struction,) so placed that the bloom will readily fall into it when drawn
from the chamber, and that the resulting crushed material or scrap
shall fall directly into a waggon or car which shall convey the charge
thence to any suitable reverberatory furnace of known construction.