Reverberatory Furnace

reverberatory furnace

Furnace used for smelting, refining, or melting in which the fuel is not in direct contact with the contents but heats it by a flame blown over it from another chamber. Such furnaces are used in copper, tin, and nickel production, in the production of certain concretes and cements, and in aluminum recycling. In steelmaking, this process (now largely obsolete) is called the open-hearth process. The heat passes over the hearth and then radiates back (reverberates) onto the contents. The roof is arched, with the highest point over the firebox. It slopes downward toward a bridge of flues that deflects the flame so that it reverberates.

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reverberatory furnace [ri′vər·brə‚tȯr·ē ¦fər·nəs]

(engineering)

A furnace in which heat is supplied by burning of fuel in a space between the charge and the low roof.

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Reverberatory Furnace 

an industrial smelting furnace in which heat is transferred to the material by radiation from the gaseous products of fuel combustion, as well as from the incandescent interior surface of the refractory furnace lining. The term “reverberatory furnace” is usually applied to furnaces used for the production of metals and semifinished products in nonferrous metallurgy (for example, smelting of copper matte from ores or concentrates, smelting of lead from lead-sulfide concentrates, and refining of copper, antimony, lead, and tin). The term is also applied to furnaces used for glassmaking and melting ferrous and nonferrous metals and alloys in the foundry industry. Open-hearth and two-bath furnaces, which are used for the production of steel, are sometimes classified as reverberatory furnaces, although they differ significantly from the reverberatory furnaces used in nonferrous metallurgy in design and the mode of heat exchange.

Reverberatory furnaces may be of the continuous-operation or batch types. In continuous-operation furnaces, the loading of initial materials and the discharge of melt take place throughout the working cycle—for example, in glassmaking or in continuous refining of lead. In batch furnaces the initial materials are charged periodically, and the entire melt is discharged from the furnace when the process has been completed—for example, after the smelting of steel in open-hearth or two-bath furnaces. Reverberatory or reflector furnaces also include those used primarily in the laboratory, in which a mirror is used to focus the radiation from the high-temperature source of heat on the object being heated.

V. M. TYMCHAK