88 
NAPORE 
[SEPTEMBER 18, 1913 
sounded in the valley as if some of the balls of fire 
had dashed into Humber Bay. The bodies vanished 
in the south-east, but the booming appeared to come 
from the west or north-west, and the time it was 
heard was close to 9.12 p.m.” 
It is fortunate that Prof. Chant lost no time in 
gathering together all the available material concern- 
ing this unusual stream of meteors, and his com- 
munication is a valuable record for future reference, 
containing numerous charts and sketches and one 
coloured drawing. 
THE BRUSSELS MEETING OF THE IRON 
AND STEEL INSTITUTE. 
THE autumn meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute | 
was held in Brussels from September 1 to 4, after 
an interval of nineteen years. It will probably rank 
as one of the most successful of the foreign visits ever 
paid by the institute, and the thanks of members and 
their wives are due to their Belgian hosts, whose fore- 
thought had provided for every contingency, and whose 
charming hospitality could not have been surpassed. 
. The chairman of the reception committee was Mons. 
Adolphe Greiner, the managing director of the famous 
Société ‘* John Cockerill,” Seraing, a works founded 
by an Englishman of that name in 1817, and the 
international character of the Iron and Steel Institute 
is well illustrated by the council’s selection of Mons. 
Greiner as the president-elect. It is customary at 
such foreign meetings for stress to be laid on papers 
dealing with the particular iron and steel industries 
of the district, and the discussions chiefly ranged round 
the contributions of the Belgian members. In an 
interesting historical survey of the metallurgy of iron in 
Belgium, Baron de Laveleye shows that Liége, Charle- 
roi, and the central district are the principal centres 
of production, the first-named being ‘the true cradle 
of the industry.” He gave it as his opinion that at 
the present day the workers in the Charleroi district 
are inferior to none in their aptitude and endurance. 
At the present time Belgium retains only 20 per cent. 
of her iron and steel products for home consumption, 
and exports 80 per cent., a larger proportion than that 
of any other country. This being so, she is compelled 
to accept as an average selling price that which rules 
in the international export market. The cost of pro- 
duction has certainly been brought down to a very 
low figure, and the author claims that it is ‘only 
by never allowing an improvement to be made without 
either adopting or trying it, by relying upon the 
energetic and hardworking labour classes to whom 
free trade supplies cheaply the necessaries of life, and 
by constantly increasing the productive capacity of 
their works that the ironmasters have succeeded in 
maintaining the struggle on an equal footing.” 
It was in Belgium that the first coke ovens were 
constructed which were heated at the side and under- 
neath by the gas evolved from the coal during coking, 
and a paper by Baron Coppée, the son of Evence 
Coppée, the inventor of the oven bearing this name, 
dealing with modern processes of coke manufacture, 
was therefore of unusual interest. In Belgium the 
beehive oven has disappeared, and 97 per cent. of the 
coke is made in by-product ovens. On the other hand, 
in England the by-product oven has made less head- 
way, partly because the first ovens erected were by no 
means as perfect as they are now, and produced a 
coke which was undoubtedly inferior to beehive coke, 
and partly on account of difficulties in connection with 
refractory materials which resulted in defective work- 
ing of the ovens. In spite of the fact that most of 
the English bricks resist high temperatures as well as 
the continental varieties, according to the author they 
NO. 2290, VOL. 92] 
have the disadvantage of contracting at high tempera- 
tures, thereby causing cracks and dislocations in the 
structure of the ovens. The result is that all the lead- 
ing constructors now use Belgian or German firebricks — 
for those parts of their ovens which are in contact 
with the hot gases. By means of an apparatus which 
was on view during the meeting the author has tested 
numerous varieties of firebricks from the point of view 
of their expansion during heating, and has found that 
they vary considerably in this respect. Some of them 
appear to undergo no expansion above 700-800 C., 
and above this range to remain constant. This is the 
best result thus far obtained. In the discussion, how- 
ever, one of the speakers claimed that the life of a good 
English brick is trom seven to eight years. The 
modern trend in Belgium and Germany is to produce 
concurrently metallurgical coke and lighting gas, and 
at the present day the latter country has no less than 
forty-five towns or communes which are wholly or 
partially supplied with lighting gas derived from coke 
ovens. 
Somewhat closely connected with the foregoing was 
a paper by Houbaer on the utilisation of blast-furnace 
and coke-oven gases in metallurgy. The application of 
the former to the development of motive power is a 
problem which has been solved for some time past. 
It is, however, only within the last few years that 
the utilisation of its calorific power for heating indus- 
trial furnaces has been taken into serious consideration, 
and the author passes in review its employment in 
heating metal mixers, open-hearth furnaces, and re- 
heating furnaces. An arrangement has been adopted 
at the Deutscher Kaiser Steelworks for heating the 
three 1200-ton metal mixers with a single burner 
capable of taking either blast-furnace gas, coke-oyen 
gas, or a mixture of both with air from the Cowper 
stoves. 
Again, at the Bethlehem steelworks coke-oven gas 
is being applied as the heating fuel to a battery of 
six 75-ton open-hearth furnaces specially built with this 
object, and to an existing series of thirteen 60-ton 
furnaces. For many years calculations have been 
made as to the saving in fuel and advantages in work- 
ing that may be expected to accrue from an artificial 
enrichment with oxygen of the air blown into a blast 
furnace, But in spite of the claims thus put forward, 
blast-furnace managers have hitherto refused to make 
the experiment, and with some reason, for the break- 
down of such a furnace would be a very expensive 
matter, and the tendency has been to wait for someone 
else to make the test. A paper by Trasenster, presented 
at the meeting, indicates that the step has just been 
taken at the Ougrée-Marihaye works in Belgium. The 
oxygen plant is composed of three similar liquid-air 
units, each yielding 200 cubic metres of oxygen per 
hour. No results of working are given in the paper, 
but during the discussion the author stated that a 
month’s trial had been run, in which the oxygen in the 
blast was raised to about 23 per cent. by volume. 
Moreover, a small blast furnace has been built in 
which the working will be carried out with very high 
percentages of oxygen, and even with pure oxygen. 
There is no doubt that these tests will be watched with 
the deepest interest, and in particular blast-furnace 
managers will desire to be informed as to how the 
difficulties which may be expected to result from in- 
creased temperature at the tuyeres are overcome. This 
is the main reason why they have been so much dis- 
inclined to make the experiments with their own 
plants. ‘ 
Mr. Talbot, the inventor of the Talbot tilting fur- 
nace, presented a paper on modern open-hearth steel 
furnaces, in which he discussed the reasons which have 
militated against their adoption on anything like an 
jie. 
