Smelting In Blast Furnaces

By examining the slag left after the process of smelting in blast furnaces, scientists have discovered that these furnaces greatly improved iron work. The modest blacksmith in the early middle ages only had a forge to make wrought iron. The invention of the blast furnace allowed blacksmiths to create hotter fires that improved the effectiveness of introducing carbon to iron in the smelting process. Later on

Blast furnace improvements The blast furnaces made in the medieval era were often made of clay. It was shaped like a chimney and allowed late medieval blacksmiths to create stronger iron much faster. Medieval metallurgists were trying to improve the process of making iron with the use of the ancient bloomery method that left much impurities

As the iron became stronger with hotter fires and less irregularities the miners could create better tools, such as stronger picks and hammers. The mines could be ventilated with fans to allow the miners to dig further into the earth. Many of the mines were flooded by water before the ore could be completely exhausted from the ground, so drainage systems were improved and implemented as well. After a large deposit of iron ore was discovered the digging would commence and the blast furnace would be built close by to keep the fire going. The surrounding forests were the main source of charcoal for the earlier blast furnaces until more efficient fuels, such as coke (not Coca-Cola or cocaine), were discovered later on in the . All of this work was just the beginning of creating the powerful steel weapons and armor of the era. Each new modification in the process of creating cast iron, often called pig iron, allowed for more advanced weapons. The new steel that burst forth from China in the first century AD became popular throughout as it reached Sweden and central Asia as Damascus steel. The Volga trade route between the Vikings and present-day Iran gave the Vikings newer

Smelting starts with simple raw (hematite and magnetite) ore to make iron by removing impurities. It includes the endothermic reaction of adding carbon to remove oxygen from iron and as the charcoal, limestone, and iron melted in the furnace, cold blasts of air would be forced into the molten mixture to make the fire hotter so that the slag could be separated from the pig iron. Limestone, referred to as flux, eased the difficulty of the separation between impurities and usable iron. Slag is lighter that pig iron so it floated in the furnace and was evacuated through a hole higher up the furnace while the iron was ushered into a flat basin at the bottom of the furnace. In the more industrialized cities, the blast furnace would almost constantly have charcoal and iron ore burning to continue the momentum of smelting because the furnaces required a great deal of energy and resources to start the process of heating the ore to the required degree to melt and separate, which was often around 1500 degrees