Natural Gas in Iron Manufacture. [Volume: 8, Issue: 2, 1888, pp. 78-80]

No. 2.]

CHARCOAL IRON WORKERS.

79

century we began to use anthracite coal in the heating furnace
and subsequently in the puddling furnace. A few years before 1840 we successfully experimented with the use of anthracite coal in the blast-furnace, and in that year its use in the
manufacture of pig-iron was fully established. Anthracite coal
is no longer used in puddling furnaces, except in very rare instances, and its use in heating furnaces is rapidly yielding to the
encroachments of bituminous coal. Except where natural gas is
used, bituminous coal is generally used in our puddling and heating furnaces. Charcoal is still used in the manufacture of "charcoal" blooms, whether made from ore or pig-iron and scrap, and.
it is used in the manufacture of our very small annual product of
cemented steel, but it is not used in the manufacture of any other
finished forms of iron or steel. In the production of gas for use
in Siemens and other regenerative heating furnaces our dependence was chiefly upon bituminous coal and very slightly upon anthracite coal until the advent of natural gas.
The development of natural gas in this country as a fuel in the
manufacture of the finished forms of iron and steel dates from
1874, * * * but as late as September, 1884, there were in
all only six rolling mills and steel works in the United States
which were using the new fuel. In August, 1886, there were
sixty-eight rolling mills and steel works which used the new fuel.
In November, 1887, there were nintey-six rolling mills and steel
works which wholly or in part used natural gas as fuel, and over
one hundred are now using it. The whole number of rolling mills
and steel works in the United States in November, 1887, completed or in course of erectionl, was four hundred and forty-five, of
which, as will be seen from the above figures, nearly one-fourth
used natural gas as fuel.
Natural gas not having been found in the anthracite coal region
or its vicinity, its use has not interfered with that of anthracite.
coal in rolling mills and steel works, bui wherever it is used it
displaces bituminous coal. It displaces no other fuel.
Nor has the use of natural gas as a fuel reduced the production
of bituminous coal in any State, not even in Pennsylvania, where
natural gas is most used. On the contrary, the production and
consumption of bituminous coal in this country have steadily increased in recent years.