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Description: | The blast furnace department was one of the most challenging environments in the Steelworks in which to be employed. Some of the files within this series contain information about the earnings and working conditions of blast-furnace workers, and detail negotiations with the National Union of Blast-Furnacemen about pay and conditions. In the minutes of a meeting between the British Steel Corporation and the National Union of Blastfurnacemen on 7th January 1975, the Union representative stated that 'Furnace conditions [were] hard. [Blast furnace workers] Deserve to be best paid men in industry.'
The processes of the blast furnace are described in great detail in the Production Record Book of the Blast Furnace, 1942-1947, DB-31/2/6/1/4, as follows:
'The ironstone and the enriching materials together with the coke form the blast furnace burden and are delivered principally by rail where they are unloaded into barrows. The burdens are wheeled to the furnace hoist and wheeled on the furnace top ball by hand in the desired proportions. The blast furnace consists of a steel cased brick lined stack about 60-ft high, at the bottom of which pre-heated air or blast is blown in by means of water cooled tuyeres. The stock is kept full of a mixture of ironstone, enriching materials and coke, the coke being necessary to provide the heat for melting the stone. As explained, the hot blast is introduced at the bottom and it travels up from the coke and stone providing the oxygen necessary for the burning of the coke, forming in its passage principally, carbon monoxide. The gas so generated, is taken away from the top of the furnace, passed through dust catchers to the gas cleaning plant where any remaining dust in suspension is removed. Some of it is used in the dirty state for the firing of stoves which are filled with checker brickwork for heating the blast to the furnace, the basic principle being that one stove is on blast while the other is being heated up. The clean gas is then taken to the power house for the purpose of driving gas engines which are used both for providing blast for the furnaces and electrical power for the whole of the Works.
Reverting to the blast furnace itself, as the burden travels down the stack it becomes hotter until it reaches the tuyere zone where it becomes molten. The liquid metal falls to the bottom of the hearth and the impurities in the form of slag, being lighter than the metal, float to the top, for this reason two tapping holes at different levels are provided at the bottom of the furnace, the higher one for the withdrawal of the slag and the lower one for the withdrawal of the metal. The furnace is tapped at regular intervals of about six hours, the slag is discharged into slag ladles in which it is allowed to solidify, and the metal is discharged into brick lined ladles for transfer to the steel works. The molten pig iron not required for steel works use is transferred in the same ladles and poured over the pig casting machine which consists essentially of a continuous conveyer on which is mounted heavy hematite iron moulds to provide the rapid chill. The iron for the steel works is picked up in the ladle by a crane and transferred to the mixer furnace which has a capacity of approximately 350 tons.'
This explanation may assist in understanding the records within the series, which relate to the blast furnace process. | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/ | Publisher: | Wolverhampton Archives | Rights holder: | Wolverhampton Archives | Temporal: | 1947-1978 | Source: | Black Country History | Identifier: | http://www.blackcountryhistory.org/colle... | Go to resource |
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