THE TARANAKI SAND DIFFICULTY

Evening Star, Issue 4190, 1 August 1876, Page 4

THE TARANAKI SAND DIFFICULTY

To the Editor, Sir, — As many of the shareholders of thp Titanic Steel Company are readers' of your paper, and as the probable, success of the trials at present being conducted at Taranaki appears to engross public attention,- it may mot be out of place, to lay before your readers a few speculations deduced from practical experiments. Kirst, I may say that the furnace in use at Taranaki, as represented by a photograph in the Athenaeum, appears to be of the old Scotch blast furnace type, whichis fastpassing into disuse, and giving place to a class of furnace closed in at the top where, after the hot 'gases have served the purpose of drying and roasting the ores they are conducted to the boiler fires to raise steam and heat the blast of-the.furnace, &c. The furnace itself not being of the most approved kind, is therefore a serious drawback to carrying out difficult experiments, with probably not the most- convenient kind off fuel. Secondly, Judging, from experiments I have taken part in in the treatment and nature of granulated iron for the purpose of making steel, I am ledio believe,that it is almost impossible to treat iron, sand successfully in a blast furnace, each granule of iron being so exposed to the oxidating effects of the blast that little else than a cinder can be expected as a residue. I know that in experiments with the Taranaki sand it is mixed with clay and made into bricks, so as to imitate the clay ores ; but in the clay ores the mixture is either an actual chemical combination or a very intimate mixture (and frequently in both conditions), and during the process of smelting the liquation of the silicates of alumina takes place, and leaves t!.e iron in a’spungy mass capable o 1 bearing its part in the furnace until it combines with the carbon of the fuel and falls to the bottom of the furnace as liquid cast iron. It is then fit to be tapped.and run into pigs. Now, in the case of the bricks containing the Taranaki aahd, when the state of liquation is approached, that sand is still sand, and either becomes oxidised and flies away with the blast or falls to the bottom of the furnace as obdurate aa ever; and if it becomes at all plastic, it will form a salamander that will ■ not.be easily removed, ijpWi judging from the foregoing line of reasoning, the only feasible and safe experiments should, be conducted with a reverberatory furnace with a hollow bottom, fettled with Sfed hematite, or such other ores as may be found most useful and convenient. I would expect the titanic sand treated in a bath of reduced hematite ore for the space of an hour would then form aplastic ball capable of being worked out like a puddle-b:dl, and producing iron of a high quality, as a percentage of titanium in iron is known to improve its quality. The subject is too big to fully deal with in one letter, but I shall willingly enter into it if it seems desirable,—Yours, &c.,

John Barrowman, South Dunedin, August 1.