As early as 1879, a blast furnace (blast furnace) was used in New Caledonia to treat laterite nickel ore. Blast furnace is a shaft furnace in metallurgical equipment. Blast furnace is a vertical furnace in which the charge containing metal components (ore, sintering fast or lump ore) is pumped into air or oxygen-rich air for smelting to obtain sulfur or crude metal.
Blast furnace has the characteristics of high thermal efficiency, unit productivity (bed capacity), high metal recovery, low cost, small footprint and so on. It is one of the important smelting equipment in pyrometallurgy.
The blast furnace is composed of the furnace base, the furnace bottom, the furnace cylinder, the furnace body, the furnace top (including the charging device), the support, the blast system, the water cooling or vaporizing cooling system, the melt discharging device and the front bed.
The furnace base is made of concrete or reinforced concrete, on which steel supports or jacks are set up to support the bottom of the furnace.
The bottom of the furnace is cast steel or cast iron plate, plate in turn is asbestos plate, clay brick, magnesia brick.
Hearth water lining wall (or laying magnesia brick) (or the bed).
The furnace body is made of several pieces of water jacket, each of which is 0.8~1.2m wide and 1.6~5m high. It is welded with boiler steel plate and fixed on a special bracket. Air pipes and water pipes are also arranged on the bracket.
Blast furnace can be used for sulfur smelting of copper, nickel, cobalt and other metals and reduction smelting of lead, zinc and other metals. It can also be used for melting mixed copper and processing other materials. Generally, the molten material of blast furnace is block and the fuel is coke. The charge is added from the top of the furnace in batches to form a material column. The air is pumped in by the lower tuyere, and the coke is burned in the tuyere area, forming a high temperature melting zone; Here the charge reacts violently and melts continuously. During reduction smelting, the melt is clarified in the furnace cylinder, and the metal and slag are released respectively. During matte smelting, the melt flows through this bed into the front bed, and the matte and slag are clarified and separated. Hot flue gas rises through the charge to the top of the furnace in the process of discharge, so that the charge preheating (smelting and kneading concentrate, but also make the concentrate sintering), and partial melting chemical reaction. Therefore, blast furnace has good heat and mass transfer conditions, high thermal efficiency and large daily production capacity per unit area (i.e., bed capacity).