Читать книгу Lead Smelting and Refining, With Some Notes on Lead Mining - Various - Страница 13

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(September 23, 1905)

The account of the introduction of the Huntington-Heberlein process at Tarnowitz, Prussia, published elsewhere in this issue, is of peculiar interest inasmuch as it tells of the complete displacement by the new process of one of the old processes of lead smelting which had become classic in the art. The roast-reaction process of lead smelting, especially as carried out in reverberatory furnaces, has been for a long time decadent, even in Europe. Tarnowitz was one of the places where it survived most vigorously.

Outside of Europe, this process never found any generally extensive application. It was tried in the Joplin district, and elsewhere in Missouri, with Flintshire furnaces in the seventies. Later it was employed with modified Flintshire and Tarnowitz furnaces at Desloge, in the Flat River district of Missouri, where the plant is still in operation, but on a reduced scale.

The roast-reaction process of smelting, as practised at Tarnowitz, was characterized by a comparatively large charge, slow roasting and low temperature, differing in these respects from the Carinthian and Welsh processes. It was not aimed to extract the maximum proportion of lead in the reverberatory furnace itself, the residue therefrom, which inevitably is high in lead, being subsequently smelted in the blast furnace. Ores too low in lead to be suitable for the reverberatory smelting were sintered in ordinary furnaces and smelted in the blast furnace together with the residue from the other process. In both of these processes the loss of lead was comparatively high. One of the most obvious advantages of the Huntington-Heberlein process is its ability to reduce the loss of lead. The result in that respect at Tarnowitz is clearly stated by Mr. Biernbaum, whose paper will surely attract a good deal of attention.[8]