Blast Furnace (Edited from Wikipedia)

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SUMMARY

A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally iron, but also others such as lead or copper.

In a blast furnace, fuel, ores, and flux (limestone) are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while a hot blast of air (sometimes with oxygen enrichment) is blown into the lower section of the furnace through a series of pipes, so that the chemical reactions take place throughout the furnace as the material moves downward. The end products are usually molten metal and slag that exit at the bottom, and hot gases exiting from the top of the furnace. The downward flow of the ore and flux in contact with an upflow of hot, carbon monoxide-rich combustion gases is a countercurrent exchange and chemical reaction process.

In contrast, air furnaces are naturally aspirated, usually by the convection of hot gases in a chimney flue. According to this broad definition, bloomeries for iron, blowing houses for tin, and smelt mills for lead would be classified as blast furnaces. However, the term has usually been limited to those used for smelting iron ore to produce pig iron, an intermediate material used in the production of commercial iron and steel, and the shaft furnaces used in combination with sinter plants in base metals smelting.

HISTORY

Blast furnaces existed in China from about 1st century AD and in the West from the High Middle Ages. They spread from the region around Belgium in the late 15th century, being introduced to England in 1491. The fuel used in these was invariably charcoal. The successful substitution of coke for charcoal is widely attributed to Abraham Darby in 1709. The efficiency of the process was further enhanced by the practice of preheating the combustion air (hot blast), patented by James Beaumont Neilson in 1828.

The oldest extant blast furnaces were built during the Han Dynasty of China in the 1st century AD. By the 11th century AD, the Song Dynasty Chinese iron industry made a remarkable switch of resources from charcoal to bituminous coal in casting iron and

1 steel, sparing thousands of acres of woodland from felling. This may have happened as early as the 4th century AD.

The oldest known blast furnaces in the West were built in Switzerland, in Germany, and in Sweden, between 1205 and 1300. The technology of blast furnace may have either been transferred from China, or may have been an indigenous innovation. Al- Qazvini in the 13th century and other travelers subsequently noted an iron industry in the Alburz Mountains to the south of the Caspian Sea. This is close to the silk route, so that the use of technology derived from China is conceivable. It is possible that the technology reached Sweden by this means.

High quality ores, water power for bellows for blast and wood for charcoal are readily obtainable in Sweden. However, since blast furnace has also been invented independently in Africa by the Haya people, it is more likely the process has been invented in Scandinavia independently. The step from bloomery to true blast furnace is not big. Simply just building a bigger furnace and using bigger bellows to increase the volume of the blast and hence the amount of oxygen leads inevitably into higher temperatures, bloom melting into liquid iron and, cast iron flowing from the smelters.

One means by which certain technological advances were transmitted within Europe was a result of the General Chapter of the Cistercian monks. This may have included the blast furnace, as the Cistercians are known to have been skilled metallurgists. According to one scholar, their high level of industrial technology facilitated the diffusion of new techniques. Iron ore deposits were often donated to the monks along with forges to extract the iron, and within time surpluses were being offered for sale. The Cistercians became the leading iron producers in Champagne, France, from the mid-13th century to the 17th century, also using the phosphate-rich slag from their furnaces as an agricultural fertilizer.

Later Innovations

In 1709, at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, England, Abraham Darby began to fuel a blast furnace with coke instead of charcoal. Coke's initial advantage was its lower cost, mainly because making coke required much less labor than cutting trees and making charcoal, but using coke also overcame localized shortages of wood, especially in Britain and on the Continent. Metallurgical grade coke will bear heavier weight than charcoal, allowing larger furnaces. A disadvantage is that coke contains more impurities than charcoal, with sulfur being especially detrimental to the iron's quality. However, it contains less sulfur than raw coal.

2 Coke iron was initially only used for foundry work, making pots and other cast iron goods. Foundry work was a minor branch of the industry, but Darby's son built a new furnace at nearby Horsehay, and began to supply the owners of finery forges with coke pig iron for the production of bar iron. Coke pig iron was by this time cheaper to produce than charcoal pig iron. The use of a coal-derived fuel in the iron industry was a key factor in the British Industrial Revolution.

Hot Blast was the single most important advance in fuel efficiency of the blast furnace and was one of the most important technologies developed during the Industrial Revolution. Hot blast was patented by James Beaumont Neilson at Wilsontown Ironworks in Scotland in 1828.

Within a few years of the introduction, hot blast was developed to the point where fuel consumption was cut by one-third using coke or two-thirds using coal, while furnace capacity was also significantly increased. Within a few decades, the practice was to have a "stove" as large as the furnace next to it into which the waste gas (containing CO) from the furnace was directed and burnt. The resultant heat was used to preheat the air blown into the furnace.

CATHOLIC MONASTIC ORDERS

The Benedictine monastic tradition began with St Benedict of Nursia himself, who was a Christian monk in the 6th century. Influenced by the writings of Saints Basil the Great and John Cassian, he composed a monastic rule for the ordering of the life of monastic communities in the West, rather than adopting one of the many rules that existed at the time but which had been composed for monks in a very different climate, with different foods available, and so forth.

By the ninth century, the Benedictine had become the standard form of monastic life throughout the whole of Western Europe, excepting Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, where the Celtic observance still prevailed for another century or two. Largely through the work of Benedict of Aniane, it became the rule of choice for monasteries throughout the Carolingian empire.

Monastic scriptoria flourished from the ninth through the twelfth centuries. Sacred Scripture was always at the heart of every monastic scriptorium. As a general rule those of the monks who possessed skill as writers made this their chief, if not their sole active work. An anonymous writer of the ninth or tenth century speaks of six hours a day as the usual task of a scribe, which would absorb almost all the time available for active work in the day of a medieval monk.

Cistercian Monks

In 1098, a Benedictine abbot, Robert of Molesme, left his monastery in Burgundy with around 20 supporters, who felt that the Cluniac communities had abandoned the rigours and simplicity of the Rule of St. Benedict. The monastery church of Cluny Abbey, the largest in Europe, had become wealthy from rents, tithes, feudal rights and pilgrims who passed through Cluniac houses on the Way of St. James.

The massive endowments, powers and responsibilities of the Cluniac abbots had drawn them into the affairs of the secular world, and their monks had abandoned manual labour to serfs to serve as scholars and exclusively "choir monks". On March 21, 1098, Robert's small group acquired a plot of marshland just south of Dijon, given to them expressly for the purpose of founding their own monastery.

The term Cistercian, derives from Cistercium, the Latin name for the village of Cîteaux, near Dijon in eastern France. It was in this village that a group of Benedictine monks from the monastery of Molesme founded Cîteaux Abbey in 1098, with the goal of following more closely the Rule of Saint Benedict.

During the first year, the monks set about constructing lodging areas and farming the lands of Cîteaux, making use of a nearby chapel for Mass. From the outset the new order emphasized a simple life of work, love, prayer and self-denial. The Cistercians initially regarded themselves as regular Benedictines, albeit the "perfect", reformed ones, but they soon came to distinguish themselves from the monks of unreformed Benedictine communities by wearing white tunics instead of black, previously reserved to hermits, who followed the "angelic" life. Cistercian abbeys also refused to admit children, allowing adults to choose their religious vocation for themselves – a practice later emulated by many of the older Benedictine houses.

In terms of receiving grants of land, the order would accept only undeveloped land (or in some cases, they accepted developed land and relocated the serfs elsewhere). They developed this land by their own labor, or by that of illiterate peasant lay brothers. These lay brothers were bound by vows of chastity and obedience to their abbot, but were otherwise permitted to follow a less demanding form of Cistercian life. Their incorporation into the order represents a compassionate outreach to the illiterate peasantry, as well as a source of labor on "unmanorialized" Cistercian lands.

The keynote of Cistercian life was a return to literal observance of the Rule of St Benedict. Rejecting the developments the Benedictines had undergone, the monks tried to replicate monastic life exactly as it had been in Saint Benedict's time; indeed in various

4 points they went beyond it in austerity. The most striking feature in the reform was the return to manual labour, especially field-work, a special characteristic of Cistercian life. Cistercian architecture is considered one of the most beautiful styles of medieval architecture. Additionally, in relation to fields such as agriculture, hydraulic engineering and metallurgy, the Cistercians became the main force of technological diffusion in medieval Europe.

The Cistercians were adversely affected in England by the Protestant Reformation, the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII, the French Revolution in continental Europe, and the revolutions of the 18th century, but some survived and the order recovered in the 19th century.

Influence

Cistercian architecture has made an important contribution to European civilization. Architecturally speaking, the Cistercian monasteries and churches, owing to their pure style, may be counted among the most beautiful relics of the Middle Ages. Cistercian foundations were primarily constructed in Romanesque and Gothic architecture during the Middle Ages.

According to one modern Cistercian, "enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit" have always been a part of the order's identity, and the Cistercians "were catalysts for development of a market economy" in 12th-century Europe. It was as agriculturists and horse and cattle breeders that the Cistercians exercised their chief influence on the progress of civilization in the Middle Ages.

As the great farmers of those days, many of the improvements in the various farming operations were introduced and propagated by them, and this is where the importance of their extension in northern Europe is to be estimated. They developed an organized system for selling their farm produce, cattle and horses, and notably contributed to the commercial progress of the countries of western Europe. To the wool and cloth trade, which was especially fostered by the Cistercians, England was largely indebted for the beginnings of her commercial prosperity.

Farming operations on so extensive a scale could not be carried out by the monks alone, whose choir and religious duties took up a considerable portion of their time; and so from the beginning the system of lay brothers was introduced on a large scale. The duties of the lay brothers, recruited from the peasantry, consisted in carrying out the various fieldworks and plying all sorts of useful trades. They formed a body of men who lived alongside of the choir monks, but separate from them, not taking part in the canonical office, but having their own fixed round of prayer and religious exercises.

5 They were never ordained, and never held any office of superiority. It was by this system of lay brothers that the Cistercians were able to play their distinctive part in the progress of European civilization.

Until the Industrial Revolution, most of the technological advances in Europe were made in the monasteries. Waterpower was used for crushing wheat, sieving flour, fulling cloth and tanning – a "level of technological achievement [that] could have been observed in practically all" of the Cistercian monasteries.