Open Hearth Furnace

Open Hearth Furnace is a reverberatory melting furnace with a shallow hearth and a low roof. In this furnace the flame passes over the charge in the hearth, leading the charge to be heated both by direct flame and radiation from the roof and sidewalls of the furnace.

Open hearth furnaces are important furnace that are used for producing steel. These furnace are used for burning carbon and other impurities from pig iron to produce steel. These furnace are capable of working and generating high temperature hence they are used for producing steel.

The operating temperature of this furnace is very high which uses regenerative preheating of fuel and air for combustion. The exhaust gases from the furnace are pumped into a chamber containing bricks in regenerative preheating. Here heat is transferred from the gases to the bricks. The furnace flow is reversed so that fuel and air pass through the chamber and are heated by the bricks. Through this method, an open-hearth furnace can reach temperatures high enough to melt steel.

The pig iron, limestone and iron ore are used as raw materials for making steel. They are fed into the furnace and heated to about 1600 F (871 C). The limestone and ore combines to form that floats on the surface. All the impurities from the iron are oxidized and float out of the iron into the slag. When the carbon content is right, you have carbon steel.