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74-551: The Dowlais Ironworks was a major ironworks and steelworks located at Dowlais near Merthyr Tydfil , in Wales . Founded in the 18th century, it operated until the end of the 20th, at one time in the 19th century being the largest steel producer in the UK. Dowlais Ironworks was the first business to license the Bessemer process , using it to produce steel in 1865. Dowlais Ironworks

148-408: A steam engine replaced a horse-powered pump in 1742. Such engines were used to pump water to a reservoir above the furnace. The first engines used to blow cylinders directly was supplied by Boulton and Watt to John Wilkinson 's New Willey Furnace. This powered a cast iron blowing cylinder , which had been invented by his father Isaac Wilkinson . He patented such cylinders in 1736, to replace

222-542: A blast furnace to melt the iron and remove the gangue (impurities) unless the ore is very high quality. The oxygen blast furnace (OBF) process has been extensively studied theoretically because of the potentials of promising energy conservation and CO 2 emission reduction. This type may be the most suitable for use with CCS. The main blast furnace has of three levels; the reduction zone (523–973 K (250–700 °C; 482–1,292 °F)), slag formation zone (1,073–1,273 K (800–1,000 °C; 1,472–1,832 °F)), and

296-413: A bloomery does not. Another difference is that bloomeries operate as a batch process whereas blast furnaces operate continuously for long periods. Continuous operation is also preferred because blast furnaces are difficult to start and stop. Also, the carbon in pig iron lowers the melting point below that of steel or pure iron; in contrast, iron does not melt in a bloomery. Silica has to be removed from

370-399: A business slump but had no cash to invest for a new blast furnace , despite having made a profit. To explain why there were no funds to invest, the manager made a new financial statement that was called a comparison balance sheet , which showed that the company was holding too much inventory . This new financial statement was the genesis of the cash flow statement that is used today. By

444-565: A descendant of Thomas Lewis. Ann's brother had sold her family's last remaining interests in the firm that year, to Guest. At its peak in 1845, the works operated 18 blast furnaces , employed 7,300 people and produced 88,400 tons of iron each year. John Josiah Guest died in 1852, having become sole owner in 1851, and was buried at St. John's church in Dowlais. Guest named Clark, his widow Lady Charlotte Guest and Edward Divett as executors and trustees . Lady Guest would be sole trustee while

518-484: 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 . However, in many areas of

592-455: A model factory, often as large as the church and only several feet away, and waterpower drove the machinery of the various industries located on its floor." Iron ore deposits were often donated to the monks along with forges to extract the iron, and after a time surpluses were offered for sale. The Cistercians became the leading iron producers in Champagne , France, from the mid-13th century to

666-546: A term of 99 years, and that with the joint stock of £4,000 which the said partners hav agreed to bring in, advance and deliver in and before the first day of January AD 1760. Lewis brought to the partnership a complex system of leases that allowed the erection of a furnace and the right to mine iron ore , coal and limestone at Dowlais, Pantyrwayn and Tor-y-Fan. Wilkinson brought in his patented machine for blowing furnaces . The other partners brought in capital and various other leases and mineral rights . The furnace

740-480: A widow but she remarried in 1855 and de facto control fell to Clark. Henry Bruce , later to become Lord Aberdare , replaced Divett. The works had been, for a while, in some decline and Clark took rapid steps to improve management controls , bringing in William Menelaus as general manager . The pair worked closely together and Dowlais again became a centre of innovation. Though the Bessemer process

814-541: Is believed to have produced cast iron quite efficiently. Its date is not yet clear, but it probably did not survive until Henry VIII 's Dissolution of the Monasteries in the late 1530s, as an agreement (immediately after that) concerning the "smythes" with the Earl of Rutland in 1541 refers to blooms. Nevertheless, the means by which the blast furnace spread in medieval Europe has not finally been determined. Due to

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888-566: Is derived from the Greek words sideros - iron and ergon or ergos - work. This is an unusual term in English, and it is best regarded as an anglicisation of a term used in French , Spanish , and other Romance languages . Historically, it is common that a community was built around the ironworks where the people living there were dependent on the ironworks to provide jobs and housing. As

962-556: Is located in Fengxiang County , Shaanxi (a museum exists on the site today). There is however no evidence of the bloomery in China after the appearance of the blast furnace and cast iron. In China, blast furnaces produced cast iron, which was then either converted into finished implements in a cupola furnace, or turned into wrought iron in a fining hearth. Although cast iron farm tools and weapons were widespread in China by

1036-464: Is possible that the technology reached Sweden by this means. The Vikings are known to have used double bellows, which greatly increases the volumetric flow of the blast. The Caspian region may also have been the source for the design of the furnace at Ferriere , described by Filarete , involving a water-powered bellows at Semogo in Valdidentro in northern Italy in 1226. In a two-stage process

1110-408: Is used to make cast iron . The majority of pig iron produced by blast furnaces undergoes further processing to reduce the carbon and sulphur content and produce various grades of steel used for construction materials, automobiles, ships and machinery. Desulphurisation usually takes place during the transport of the liquid steel to the steelworks. This is done by adding calcium oxide , which reacts with

1184-774: The Chinese examples, were very inefficient compared to those used today. The iron from the Lapphyttan complex was used to produce balls of wrought iron known as osmonds , and these were traded internationally – a possible reference occurs in a treaty with Novgorod from 1203 and several certain references in accounts of English customs from the 1250s and 1320s. Other furnaces of the 13th to 15th centuries have been identified in Westphalia . The technology required for blast furnaces may have either been transferred from China, or may have been an indigenous innovation. Al-Qazvini in

1258-540: 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

1332-545: The Ironbridge Gorge Museums. Cast iron from the furnace was used to make girders for the world's first cast iron bridge in 1779. The Iron Bridge crosses the River Severn at Coalbrookdale and remains in use for pedestrians. The steam engine was applied to power blast air, overcoming a shortage of water power in areas where coal and iron ore were located. This was first done at Coalbrookdale where

1406-492: The Lehigh Crane Iron Company at Catasauqua, Pennsylvania , in 1839. Anthracite use declined when very high capacity blast furnaces requiring coke were built in the 1870s. The blast furnace remains an important part of modern iron production. Modern furnaces are highly efficient, including Cowper stoves to pre-heat the blast air and employ recovery systems to extract the heat from the hot gases exiting

1480-673: 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. Blast furnaces are estimated to have been responsible for over 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions between 1900 and 2015, but are difficult to decarbonize. Blast furnaces operate on

1554-893: The fuel efficiency of the bloomery and improves yield. They can also be built bigger than natural draught bloomeries. The oldest known blast furnaces in the West were built in Durstel in Switzerland , the Märkische Sauerland in Germany , and at Lapphyttan in Sweden , where the complex was active between 1205 and 1300. At Noraskog in the Swedish parish of Järnboås, traces of even earlier blast furnaces have been found, possibly from around 1100. These early blast furnaces, like

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1628-463: The iron sulfide contained in the pig iron to form calcium sulfide (called lime desulfurization ). In a further process step, the so-called basic oxygen steelmaking , the carbon is oxidized by blowing oxygen onto the liquid pig iron to form crude steel . Cast iron has been found in China dating to the 5th century BC, but the earliest extant blast furnaces in China date to the 1st century AD and in

1702-574: The 'dwarf" blast furnaces were found in Dabieshan . In construction, they are both around the same level of technological sophistication. The effectiveness of the Chinese human and horse powered blast furnaces was enhanced during this period by the engineer Du Shi (c. AD 31), who applied the power of waterwheels to piston - bellows in forging cast iron. Early water-driven reciprocators for operating blast furnaces were built according to

1776-662: The 13th century and other travellers 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. Much later descriptions record blast furnaces about three metres high. As the Varangian Rus' people from Scandinavia traded with the Caspian (using their Volga trade route ), it

1850-411: The 1550s, and many were built in the remainder of that century and the following ones. The output of the industry probably peaked about 1620, and was followed by a slow decline until the early 18th century. This was apparently because it was more economic to import iron from Sweden and elsewhere than to make it in some more remote British locations. Charcoal that was economically available to the industry

1924-500: The 17th century, also using the phosphate -rich slag from their furnaces as an agricultural fertilizer . Archaeologists are still discovering the extent of Cistercian technology. At Laskill , an outstation of Rievaulx Abbey and the only medieval blast furnace so far identified in Britain , the slag produced was low in iron content. Slag from other furnaces of the time contained a substantial concentration of iron, whereas Laskill

1998-425: The 19th century usually included one or more blast furnaces and a number of puddling furnaces or a foundry with or without other kinds of ironworks. After the invention of the Bessemer process , converters became widespread, and the appellation steelworks replaced ironworks. The processes carried at ironworks are usually described as ferrous metallurgy, but the term siderurgy is also occasionally used. This

2072-479: The 4th century AD. The primary advantage of the early blast furnace was in large scale production and making iron implements more readily available to peasants. Cast iron is more brittle than wrought iron or steel, which required additional fining and then cementation or co-fusion to produce, but for menial activities such as farming it sufficed. By using the blast furnace, it was possible to produce larger quantities of tools such as ploughshares more efficiently than

2146-511: The 5th century BC , employing workforces of over 200 men in iron smelters from the 3rd century onward, the earliest blast furnaces constructed were attributed to the Han dynasty in the 1st century AD. These early furnaces had clay walls and used phosphorus -containing minerals as a flux . Chinese blast furnaces ranged from around two to ten meters in height, depending on the region. The largest ones were found in modern Sichuan and Guangdong , while

2220-522: The Corsican, was used prior to the advent of Christianity . Examples of improved bloomeries are the Stuckofen, sometimes called wolf-furnace, which remained until the beginning of the 19th century. Instead of using natural draught, air was pumped in by a trompe , resulting in better quality iron and an increased capacity. This pumping of air in with bellows is known as cold blast , and it increases

2294-476: The Dowlais Iron Company with his son-in-law William Taitt. Guest introduced many innovations and the works prospered. Thomas Guest died in 1807 and his son John Josiah Guest became sole manager, by 1815 owning nine of the sixteen shares. His brother Thomas Revel Guest owned one and Whyndham Lewis, the remaining six. Guest established the works in the vanguard of the Industrial Revolution and

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2368-536: The Dowlais Works' early conversion to steel production allowed it to survive into the 1930s. However, largely as a result of the Great Depression , the main works ceased production in 1936, the company having built a new iron and steel works at East Moors, adjacent to the docks at Cardiff in the late 19th century. On 18 November 1936 Dowlais Ironworks was visited by King Edward VIII , which at

2442-533: The West from the High Middle Ages . They spread from the region around Namur in Wallonia (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 English inventor Abraham Darby in 1709. The efficiency of the process was further enhanced by the practice of preheating

2516-591: The application of science to industry, the works being honoured by a visit from Michael Faraday in 1819. Under Guest's leadership, alongside his manager John Evans, the Dowlais Ironworks gained the reputation of being "one of the World's great industrial concerns". In 1821, the works supplied iron for the railway tracks of the Stockton and Darlington Railway , the world's first passenger railway. Over

2590-594: The area with higher temperatures, ranging up to 1200 °C degrees, it is reduced further to iron metal: The carbon dioxide formed in this process is re-reduced to carbon monoxide by the coke : The temperature-dependent equilibrium controlling the gas atmosphere in the furnace is called the Boudouard reaction : The pig iron produced by the blast furnace has a relatively high carbon content of around 4–5% and usually contains too much sulphur, making it very brittle, and of limited immediate commercial use. Some pig iron

2664-432: The blast furnace, such as the Swedish electric blast furnace, have been developed in countries which have no native coal resources. According to Global Energy Monitor , the blast furnace is likely to become obsolete to meet climate change objectives of reducing carbon dioxide emission, but BHP disagrees. An alternative process involving direct reduced iron (DRI) is likely to succeed it, but this also needs to use

2738-479: The bloomery. In areas where quality was important, such as warfare, wrought iron and steel were preferred. Nearly all Han period weapons are made of wrought iron or steel, with the exception of axe-heads, of which many are made of cast iron. Blast furnaces were also later used to produce gunpowder weapons such as cast iron bomb shells and cast iron cannons during the Song dynasty . The simplest forge , known as

2812-434: The combustion air ( hot blast ), patented by Scottish inventor James Beaumont Neilson in 1828. Archaeological evidence shows that bloomeries appeared in China around 800 BC. Originally it was thought that the Chinese started casting iron right from the beginning, but this theory has since been debunked by the discovery of 'more than ten' iron digging implements found in the tomb of Duke Jing of Qin (d. 537 BC), whose tomb

2886-402: The combustion air being supplied above atmospheric pressure . In a blast furnace, fuel ( coke ), 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 called tuyeres , so that the chemical reactions take place throughout

2960-424: The combustion zone (1,773–1,873 K (1,500–1,600 °C; 2,732–2,912 °F)). Blast furnaces are currently rarely used in copper smelting, but modern lead smelting blast furnaces are much shorter than iron blast furnaces and are rectangular in shape. Modern lead blast furnaces are constructed using water-cooled steel or copper jackets for the walls, and have no refractory linings in the side walls. The base of

3034-537: The context of the iron industry, the term manufacture is best reserved for this final stage. The notable ironworks of the world are described here by country. See above for the largest producers and the notable ironworks in the alphabetical order. The largest Japanese steel companies' main works are as follows: Blast furnace A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron , but also others such as lead or copper . Blast refers to

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3108-410: The first being that preheated air blown into the furnace reacts with the carbon in the form of coke to produce carbon monoxide and heat: Hot carbon monoxide is the reducing agent for the iron ore and reacts with the iron oxide to produce molten iron and carbon dioxide . Depending on the temperature in the different parts of the furnace (warmest at the bottom) the iron is reduced in several steps. At

3182-414: The following: The mills operating converters of any type are better called steelworks, ironworks referring to former processes, like puddling . After bar iron had been produced in a finery forge or in the forge train of a rolling mill, it might undergo further processes in one of the following: Most of these processes did not produce finished goods. Further processes were often manual, including In

3256-479: The furnace as the material falls downward. The end products are usually molten metal and slag phases tapped from the bottom, and waste gases ( flue gas ) exiting from the top of the furnace. The downward flow of the ore along with the 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 (such as reverberatory furnaces ) are naturally aspirated, usually by

3330-478: The furnace has a chair shape with the lower part of the shaft being narrower than the upper. The lower row of tuyeres being located in the narrow part of the shaft. This allows the upper part of the shaft to be wider than the standard. The blast furnaces used in the Imperial Smelting Process ("ISP") were developed from the standard lead blast furnace, but are fully sealed. This is because

3404-472: The furnace is a hearth of refractory material (bricks or castable refractory). Lead blast furnaces are often open-topped rather than having the charging bell used in iron blast furnaces. The blast furnace used at the Nyrstar Port Pirie lead smelter differs from most other lead blast furnaces in that it has a double row of tuyeres rather than the single row normally used. The lower shaft of

3478-474: 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. Hot blast enabled the use of raw anthracite coal, which was difficult to light, in the blast furnace. Anthracite was first tried successfully by George Crane at Ynyscedwyn Ironworks in south Wales in 1837. It was taken up in America by

3552-481: The furnace. Competition in industry drives higher production rates. The largest blast furnace in the world is in South Korea, with a volume around 6,000 m (210,000 cu ft). It can produce around 5,650,000 tonnes (5,560,000 LT) of iron per year. This is a great increase from the typical 18th-century furnaces, which averaged about 360 tonnes (350 long tons; 400 short tons) per year. Variations of

3626-694: The increased demand for iron for casting cannons, the blast furnace came into widespread use in France in the mid 15th century. The direct ancestor of those used in France and England was in the Namur region, in what is now Wallonia (Belgium). From there, they spread first to the Pays de Bray on the eastern boundary of Normandy and from there to the Weald of Sussex , where the first furnace (called Queenstock) in Buxted

3700-400: The iron's quality. Coke's impurities were more of a problem before hot blast reduced the amount of coke required and before furnace temperatures were hot enough to make slag from limestone free flowing. (Limestone ties up sulphur. Manganese may also be added to tie up sulphur.) Coke iron was initially only used for foundry work, making pots and other cast iron goods. Foundry work was

3774-425: The ironworks closed down (or was industrialised) these villages quite often went into decline and experienced negative economic growth. Ironworks is used as an omnibus term covering works undertaking one or more iron-producing processes. Such processes or species of ironworks where they were undertaken include the following: From the 1850s, pig iron might be partly decarburised to produce mild steel using one of

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3848-454: The leather bellows, which wore out quickly. Isaac was granted a second patent, also for blowing cylinders, in 1757. The steam engine and cast iron blowing cylinder led to a large increase in British iron production in the late 18th century. 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

3922-438: The mid-1860s, Clark's reforms had born fruit in renewed profitability . Clark delegated day-to-day management to Menelaus, his trusteeship terminating in 1864 when ownership passed to Sir Ivor Guest . However, Clark continued to direct policy, in particular, building a new plant at the docks at Cardiff and vetoing a joint-stock company . He formally retired in 1897. Sir Ivor was distracted by other interests and, in 1899, sold

3996-535: The molten iron was tapped twice a day into water, thereby granulating it. The General Chapter of the Cistercian monks spread some technological advances across Europe. This may have included the blast furnace, as the Cistercians are known to have been skilled metallurgists . According to Jean Gimpel, their high level of industrial technology facilitated the diffusion of new techniques: "Every monastery had

4070-592: The name of the Dowlais Foundry and Engineering Company , but was transferred to the nationalised British Steel Corporation in 1973, along with £20 million in cash (equivalent to £153 million in 2003) in return for the previously nationalised Brymbo Steelworks . It closed in 1987. 51°45′37″N 3°21′00″W  /  51.7604°N 3.3499°W  / 51.7604; -3.3499 Ironworks Ironworks succeeded bloomeries when blast furnaces replaced former methods. An integrated ironworks in

4144-601: The next three decades, iron was needed in ever greater quantities to build the rapidly expanding railways . Dowlais had many foreign orders for railways in 1835–1836 such as the Berlin and Leipzig Railway and the St. Petersburg-Pauloffsky Railway . Sometime during 1835, Guest made the acquaintance of engineer G. T. Clark . Both had been involved in the Taff Vale Railway . In 1850, Clark married Ann Price Lewis (died 1885),

4218-399: The particle size of the coke or charcoal is of great relevance. Therefore, the coke must be strong enough so it will not be crushed by the weight of the material above it. Besides the physical strength of its particles, the coke must also be low in sulfur, phosphorus , and ash. The main chemical reaction producing the molten iron is: This reaction might be divided into multiple steps, with

4292-457: The pig iron. It reacts with calcium oxide (burned limestone) and forms silicates, which float to the surface of the molten pig iron as slag. Historically, to prevent contamination from sulfur, the best quality iron was produced with charcoal. In a blast furnace, a downward-moving column of ore, flux, coke (or charcoal ) and their reaction products must be sufficiently porous for the flue gas to pass through, upwards. To ensure this permeability

4366-404: The principle of chemical reduction whereby carbon monoxide converts iron oxides to elemental iron. Blast furnaces differ from bloomeries and reverberatory furnaces in that in a blast furnace, flue gas is in direct contact with the ore and iron, allowing carbon monoxide to diffuse into the ore and reduce the iron oxide. The blast furnace operates as a countercurrent exchange process whereas

4440-419: The reaction zone. As the material travels downward, the counter-current gases both preheat the feed charge and decompose the limestone to calcium oxide and carbon dioxide: The calcium oxide formed by decomposition reacts with various acidic impurities in the iron (notably silica ), to form a fayalitic slag which is essentially calcium silicate , Ca Si O 3 : As the iron(II) oxide moves down to

4514-479: The structure of horse powered reciprocators that already existed. That is, the circular motion of the wheel, be it horse driven or water driven, was transferred by the combination of a belt drive , a crank-and-connecting-rod, other connecting rods , and various shafts, into the reciprocal motion necessary to operate a push bellow. Donald Wagner suggests that early blast furnace and cast iron production evolved from furnaces used to melt bronze . Certainly, though, iron

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4588-563: The time was closed, putting thousands out of work. The King was reported as saying that "these works brought these men here. Something must be done to get them back to work", a statement which was seen as political interference, and contributed to the Edward VIII abdication crisis . The iron foundry and engineering works in Dowlais, still known locally as the "Ifor Works" after John Josiah's son, continued to operate and new facilities were built after 1945. It continued for some years under

4662-427: The top, where the temperature usually is in the range between 200 °C and 700 °C, the iron oxide is partially reduced to iron(II,III) oxide, Fe 3 O 4 . The temperatures 850 °C, further down in the furnace, the iron(II,III) is reduced further to iron(II) oxide: Hot carbon dioxide, unreacted carbon monoxide, and nitrogen from the air pass up through the furnace as fresh feed material travels down into

4736-558: The works to Arthur Keen who formed Guest, Keen & Co. Ltd . In 1902, Keen purchased Nettlefolds Limited to create Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds . In 1912, King George V of the United Kingdom and Queen Mary made an official visit to the ironworks as part of a tour of south Wales. They entered through a specially-constructed arch of coal, and left through an arch of steel. Unlike the Cyfarthfa Ironworks ,

4810-774: The world charcoal was cheaper while coke was more expensive even after the Industrial Revolution: e. g., in the US charcoal-fueled iron production fell in share to about a half ca. 1850 but still continued to increase in absolute terms until ca. 1890, while in João Monlevade in the Brazilian Highlands charcoal-fired blast furnaces were built as late as the 1930s and only phased out in 2000. Darby's original blast furnace has been archaeologically excavated and can be seen in situ at Coalbrookdale, part of

4884-586: The zinc produced by these furnaces is recovered as metal from the vapor phase, and the presence of oxygen in the off-gas would result in the formation of zinc oxide. Blast furnaces used in the ISP have a more intense operation than standard lead blast furnaces, with higher air blast rates per m of hearth area and a higher coke consumption. Zinc production with the ISP is more expensive than with electrolytic zinc plants, so several smelters operating this technology have closed in recent years. However, ISP furnaces have

4958-530: Was licensed in 1856, nine years of detailed planning and project management were needed before the first steel was produced. The company thrived with its new cost-effective production methods, forming alliances with the Consett Iron Company and Krupp . By 1857 Clark and Menelaus had constructed the "Goat Mill", the world's most powerful rolling mill . In 1863, the Company had recovered from

5032-532: Was built in about 1491, followed by one at Newbridge in Ashdown Forest in 1496. They remained few in number until about 1530 but many were built in the following decades in the Weald, where the iron industry perhaps reached its peak about 1590. Most of the pig iron from these furnaces was taken to finery forges for the production of bar iron . The first British furnaces outside the Weald appeared during

5106-477: Was essential to military success by the time the State of Qin had unified China (221 BC). Usage of the blast and cupola furnace remained widespread during the Song and Tang dynasties . By the 11th century, the Song dynasty Chinese iron industry made a switch of resources from charcoal to coke in casting iron and steel, sparing thousands of acres of woodland from felling. This may have happened as early as

5180-427: Was established on the hillside above Merthyr, not an ideal location, but all the elements for production were at hand. However, the enterprise struggled, management being too thinly spread among the partners and on 13 April 1767 John Guest was appointed manager. In 1781, Guest purchased 7 of the 16 shares in the works and a second furnace was built. In 1786, John Guest was succeeded by his son, Thomas Guest , who formed

5254-404: Was founded as a partnership on 19 September 1759. There were nine original partners including Thomas Lewis and Isaac Wilkinson . The purpose of the partnership was the: ... art misterry, and business of an iron master and iron manufacturer, and for that purpose to build a certain ffurnace or ffurnaces for smelting of iron ore or mine or stone into pig iron in the parish of Merthyr Tidvil for

5328-529: 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 eleswhere in Europe. 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

5402-582: Was one of the four principal ironworks in Merthyr. The other three were Cyfarthfa , Plymouth , and Penydarren Ironworks . In 1936 Dowlais played a part in the events leading to the abdication crisis of Edward VIII , when the King visited the steelworks and was reported as saying that "these works brought these men here. Something must be done to get them back to work", a statement which was seen as political interference. The steelworks closed in 1987. The works

5476-646: Was probably being consumed as fast as the wood to make it grew. The first blast furnace in Russia opened in 1637 near Tula and was called the Gorodishche Works. The blast furnace spread from there to central Russia and then finally to the Urals . In 1709, at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, England, Abraham Darby began to fuel a blast furnace with coke instead of charcoal . Coke's initial advantage

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