Coke smelting of iron

Assembled from 25 blocks · 1 evidence · 27 related

1. Story
2. The substitution of coke for charcoal in the iron blast furnace, achieved by Abraham Darby at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire in 1709. Raw coal cannot be used, because its sulphur passes into the metal and makes it brittle; coking drives off the volatiles first and leaves a strong, porous, largely sulphur-reduced fuel that also stands up to the weight of a tall furnace charge better than charcoal does. Darby's success was partly a matter of local geology — the Shropshire coals happened to be low in sulphur — and partly of his product, thin-walled cast cooking pots, for which the resulting iron was good enough when it would not yet have served for the best forge work. Adoption was therefore slow for half a century, and only became general once furnace practice and coal selection had been worked out more widely. Its significance is categorical rather than technical: it is the moment iron stops competing with agriculture for land.
3. Knowledge
4. Coal
5. Coke smelting of iron
6. Abraham Darby I
7. Connections
8. Abraham Darby I
9. Coal
10. Darby smelts iron with coke at Coalbrookdale
11. Coke smelting of iron
12. Darby smelts iron with coke at Coalbrookdale
13. The Iron Bridge opens over the Severn
14. The organic economy and its ceiling
15. The Newcomen atmospheric engine
16. Coke smelting of iron
17. The British canal network
18. Industrial child labour
19. The first commercially successful steam engine begins pumping
20. The Bridgewater Canal opens from Worsley into Manchester
21. The Stockton and Darlington Railway opens
22. Women and young boys are barred from working underground
23. The main-line steam locomotive
24. Evidence
25. Supports the inscription of the gorge, the Darby furnace and the Iron Bridge as a landscape of early industrial ironmaking. V55 verification basis: NOT consulted — whc.unesco.org is blocked from this session. The reference number and criteria are omitted rather than reconstructed.