Schuylkill Valley Paper - The Hugh Kennedy Hot-Blast Stove

Fire-brick stoves have become a necessary part of the modern coke blast-furnace equipment, and are also superseding the cast-iron pipe stoves in anthracite- and charcoal-furnaces. The brick stoves in general use are of either the Cowper or Whitwell type, or modifications of these bearing the names of those who invented the alterations from the original types rather than any real departure from then]. All these stoves have approximately the same valve-equipment and follow the same line of operation. The waste gas from the furnace enters at one port and burns in a single combustion-chamber, and the heated products are drawn through the various passe; in the brickwork to a stack of proper height to create the necessary draught. The last passes of these stoves receive a very small percentage of the heat from the gas, owing to their extreme distance from the combustion-chamber; and this chamber also suffers great deterioration in the attempt to force the heat into the farthest passes. At best, about 70 per cent. of the heat taken up is held in the combustion-chamher and the first down-pass of the Whitwell stoves. Mr. Hugh Kennedy, Manager of the Isabella Furnaces, Pittsburgh, Pa., who has had a large experience with the fire-brick hotblast stoves, was so strongly impressed with the fact that but about thirty per cent of the brick of the average stove were doing proper duty as heat-agents, that, after careful study and experiment, he had three 20- by 60-feet stoves constructed with a view of more uniformly heating all the brick. In these the general lines of the Whitwell stove are followed, with the blast-connections unaltered, but gas is introduced at the bottom of each pass, and outlets are provided at the top, so that the gases have a direct natural draught in each pass and the highest heats are obtained at the bottom instead of the top. The natural tendency being toward the reverse condition, the brickwork soon acquires an almost uniform temperature.