Developments in Blast Furnace Practice

Abstract

IT WILL be generally accepted that the principal factors in the economy of the blast furnace are productivity and the coke rate. With the ever in- creasing demand for iron, attention was focussed in the inter-war period, and since the last war, on in-creasing productivity by building larger furnaces which were, by virtue of their size, able to burn more coke and smelt more ore per hour with relativ- ely small additions to the labour force, therefore giving much higher productivity in terms of tons of iron per hour and tons per men employed.