English:

Identifier: leadpoisoningins00hami (find matches)
Title: Lead poisoning in the smelting and refining of lead
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Hamilton, Alice, 1869-1970 Meeker, Royal, b. 1873
Subjects: Lead Lead industry and trade Hazardous occupations Lead Poisoning
Publisher: Washington, Govt. print. off.
Contributing Library: Columbia University Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Open Knowledge Commons

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PLATE 4.— HUNTINGTON-HEBERLEIN POT.

The pot is the lower half, the upper half consisting of the great hood and flue which is fitted over the pot during roasting. The windows in the side are opened for raking from time to time. When roasting is complete the hood is lifted off, the pot caught by a crane, tipped over, and the smoking charge dumped and crushed.

HUNTINGTON-HEBERLEIN POTS.

This method of roasting and sintering ores was developed in Europe and introduced into this country in 1905. The general design of these furnaces is shown in the accompanying illustration (plate 4). The charge to be roasted is placed in a huge cast-iron pot which has a false bottom. If the first layers of the charge are red-hot, the roasting begins the moment the blast is turned on beneath the grate; otherwise a coal or coke fire must be started in the bottom before the charge is dumped in.
As the blast is forced into the pot and the gaseous products of the roasting must pass away from the top of the pot, it is necessary to provide a hood and an abundant draft in order to work about the pot at all. The charge in the pot usually has to be poked at intervals, thus necessitating opening the doors of the hood to see in and use the poker.
The charging of the pots need not be bad work, for the charge should be moist to roast best, and this keeps down the dust. Of course, when the pots are charged with dry, fine material it is a dusty task, and still worse when the charge is red-hot.

The discharging of the pots is an extremely unsatisfactory part of their use. The charge is hot, smoking, and dusty; it may be dumped out by simply turning the pot or by lifting the whole pot and turning it over in mid-air. In any case clouds of fume and dust fill the air surrounding the workmen and the craneman who is controlling the mechanical hoister. The breaking of the big cakes of sintered ore (called “ the button ” ) is a part of the dumping and no really satisfactory method of dumping and crushing has yet been devised. Usually the cake drops from a height and breaks into great masses, then a crushing stone is lifted by machinery and dropped on it repeatedly, and finally the men break up the refractory masses by hand and shovel the coarse mass into the crusher or into trucks for the crusher. This is almost always one of the most dangerous places in a smelter.