hot-blast stove

hot-blast stove, apparatus for preheating air blown into a blast furnace, an important step in raising the efficiency of iron processing. Preheated air was first used by James Beaumont Neilson in 1828 in Glasgow, but not until 1860 did the Englishman Edward Alfred Cowper invent the first successful hot-blast stove. Essentially, the stove is a vertical cylindrical steel shell lined with firebrick and with the interior separated into two chambers: a combustion chamber, in which gases from the blast furnace and from other fuel sources such as the coking plant are burned, and a regenerative chamber filled with a checkerwork of refractory brick heated by the burned gas. Many blast furnaces are served by three stoves; while two are being heated, the air blast passes through the regenerative chamber of the third stove on its way to the blast furnace. Blast furnaces fed with air that has been preheated to temperatures from 900 to 1,250 °C (1,650 to 2,300 °F) can generate smelting temperatures of about 1,650 °C (3,000 °F), significantly reducing the consumption of coke per ton of iron produced.