The Ingredients for Iron-Making

Look around you, these five blast furnaces were the heart of the plant for many decades. Ordinarily up to three of the five furnaces would be operating at one time. They ran continuously-night and day, seven days a week-and required constant feeding of materials. To make one ton of pig iron, the furnaces required 1 ton of coke, 2 tons of iron ore or pellets, ½ ton of limestone, and about 4 tons of heated, pressurized air.
1 Ingredients Go In
Iron ore: a rocky mineral mined from the earth. Coke: a high-carbon fuel obtained from the processing of coal. Limestone: a mineral that acts as a flux and captures impurities in iron.
2 Loading The Furnace
Iron ore and limestone were brought to the furnace in transfer cars, while hopper cars delivered coke. The three ingredients were dumped into storage bins below the trestle. Skip cars hoisted the materials up the inclined track, charging them into the furnace in layers.
3 A Blast Of Heat
Hot, pressurized air was shot into the blast furnaces. As the coke burned, the inside of the furnace would reach over 3000° Fahrenheit! Hot gases rose through the descending ore, coke and limestone, left the furnace through large pipes, and were cleaned



for further use as a fuel.

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Show me all markers in:  Bethlehem, PA  |  Northampton County  |  18015  |  Pennsylvania  |  United States of America

Immigration & Industry
Making Iron
Moving Materials
Hot, Loud, & Dangerous
The Beginnings of Bethlehem Steel
A Community of Workers
Iron and Steel: A History
Air Products
The Blower House
Bethlehem Built

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