Lead Smelting and Refining, With Some Notes on Lead Mining
Science
Lead Smelting and Refining, With Some Notes on Lead Mining
Lead -- Metallurgy; Lead mines and mining
The English Yeadon (fuel) press has also been used for some years at
the Carlton Iron Company’s Works at Ferryhill in England, and at the
Ore and Fuel Company’s plant at Coatbridge in the same country; also by
some Continental firms. Dupuis & Sons, Paris, furnished a few presses
which are mostly used for manganese and iron ores and pyrites. In
some localities coke dust is added. The making of clay briquettes or
mud-cakes is the crudest form of briquetting; but while heat has to
be expended to evaporate the 40 to 50 per cent. of moisture in them,
and while considerable flue dust is made, this method is better than
feeding fine ore or flue dust directly into the furnace.
The only other method of avoiding briquetting is by fusing ore fines in
slagging reverberatory furnaces and by adding flue dust in the slagging
pit, thus incorporating it with the slagging ore. This is practised
sometimes in silver-lead smelters, but in connection with copper or
iron smelters it is not practicable.
In briquetting minerals a thorough mixing and kneading is of the first
importance. If this is done properly a comparatively low pressure will
suffice to create a good and solid briquette, which after six to eight
hours of air-drying, or after a speedier elimination of the surplus of
moisture in hot-air chambers, will be ready for the furnace charge. A
good briquette should permit transportation without excessive breakage
or dust a few hours after being made, and it should retain its shape in
the furnace until completely fused, so as to create as little flue dust
as possible. The briquette should be dense, otherwise it will crumble
under the influence of bad weather.
The two presses on the American machinery market are the type built by
the Chisholm, Boyd & White Company, of Chicago, and the briquetting
machine manufactured by the H. S. Mould Company, of Pittsburg. Both are
extensively used, and in many metallurgical plants it will pay well to
adopt them.
From 4 to 6 per cent. of milk of lime is generally used as binder,
and this has a desirable fluxing influence also. A complete outfit
comprises, besides the press, a mixer for slacking the lime, and a
feed-pump which discharges the liquid in proportion into the main mixer
wherein the ore fines, flue dust, or concentrates are shoveled.
The Chisholm, Boyd & White Company’s press makes 80 briquettes per
minute, which, with a new disk, are of 4 in. diameter and 2½ in. hight,
thus giving about 872 cu. ft. of briquette volume per 10 hours, or 50
to 80 tons, depending on the weight of the material. With the wear of
the disk the hight of the briquettes is reduced and consequently the
capacity of the machine also. The disk weighs about 1600 lb., and as
most large smelters have their own foundries it can be replaced with
little expense. About 30 effective horse-power is usually provided for
driving the apparatus. The machine is too well known to metallurgists
and engineers to require further comment or description.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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