Developments in Blast Furnace Practice

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.