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The present study investigates the effect of different forms of carbon in various coal and char-based composite pellets on reduction kinetics in a laboratory-scale multi-layer bed rotary hearth fur...

Blast furnace ironmaking usually requires maintaining a reasonable level of hot metal desulphurization; therefore, knowledge of the complex interplay between physical properties and desulphurizatio...

This article discusses the ‘red yurt’ campaigns in early Soviet Kazakhstan, in which party and state institutions sponsored mobile centres of Soviet culture in nomadic pastoralist communities. In c...

Studies investigating the production of later Acheulian handaxes in South Africa remain rare. Acheulian assemblages in this region are typically fragmented, which hinders our ability to investigate...

Coke–slag–metal samples located near the deadman edge and below the taphole of blast furnace were obtained by core drilling after cooling. The chemical composition, microstructure, phase composition and distribution of samples were studied in detail. In addition, the graphitisation degree of coke in hearth was also investigated. The results showed that coke larger than 60 mm still existed (more than 1%). Pores in coke are filled with molten slag and a small part of liquid iron. The pores in hearth coke are not completely filled, but there is still plenty of micropore, with a volume of less than 1 mm. There are also a little alkali metals (K and Na) in ash, which causes the deterioration of coke. The iron–carbon interface is covered by a slag layer. The coke remained in deadman long enough to undergo the graphitisation process.

The authors take a novel look at recent Hungarian economic policy achievements of Orban governments. Compared to the Hungarian economic policies of the 2000s and the decades after 1989 up to 2010, ...

With the development of a large-scale blast furnace, hearth activity has an important impact on the longevity and efficiency. Based on the analysis of practical example of ShaSteel No. 3 blast furn...

Charred seeds, including those of goosefoot, amaranth, sedge, and possibly nightshade, were recovered from a Late Paleoindian context at the Bull Creek site in the Oklahoma panhandle. The use of th...

Ten 1904 postcards, marketing the Odelin Le Rustique stove, spin a fanciful, magical tale, an early example of branded storytelling, within the little–studied medium of Belle Epoque advertising pos...

This article re-investigates the conventional relationship between the Victorian hearth and women in Dickens’s Great Expectations and Hard Times. The Victorian hearth is ideologically tied with mea...

An image analysis-based method is developed to automatically interpret videos of a transparent Hele-Shaw model in studies of blast furnace hearth drainage in pilot scale. By the approach, informati...

A CDF model for simulating gas dynamics, heat and mass transfer in the freeboard of a pilot-scale Rotary Hearth Furnace (RHF) is developed in conjunction with an independent solid reduction model a...

In this paper, we make a quantitative analysis of spatial patterns for the earliest archaeological component (early Holocene) at Cueva Maripe, a multiple-activity site located in Santa Cruz provinc...

This collection is far more beautiful than expected, an immersive and affecting emotional experience that accompanied the developing reality of COVID-19 and its disjointed unfolding of time. Most o...

The excellent properties of titanium pellet Z in the blast furnace hearth protection were determined by studying the composition, metallurgical properties and a over four years period of ap...

Test excavations in a small rockshelter in the mountains of North Carolina uncovered remains of a hearth containing carbonized twigs, maize kernels, bean cotyledons, animal bone, and the fr...

The operation of blast furnace is considerably influenced by slag performance, particularly in BF hearth. Slag holdup in deadman has negative effects on hearth, such as sharp peripheral flow of hot...

A coupled flow and refractory model (CFRM) has been upgraded to assist engineers in understanding and interpreting the measured refractory temperature distributions in the hearth of a blast furnace...

The ‘direct’ dating of rock art has proliferated since the development of accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon, uranium-series and optically stimulated luminescence dating, yet still, most rock art is not directly datable due to the mineral nature of the constituent pigments. Here we present another method: the recovery and dating by stratigraphic association of small buried fragments of ochre and dried paint drops deposited onto soft sediment surfaces as by-products of paint production and use. These finds also give added contextual occupational information for archaeology of painting events. The case is made through the example of Borologa 1, a richly decorated Wanjina rockshelter in the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia that contains buried hearths, grindstones, earth pigments and small fallen spalls of rock containing traces of pigment and paint drops. Results from excavation indicate the beginning of Wanjina motifs and associated painting conventions on Art Panel B1 sometime between 2,080–1,160 cal BP and their proliferation in the past millennium.

The Viejo period (600–1250 CE) represents a major chronological horizon of the Casas Grandes culture area in northwest Mexico. Little is still known about Viejo period society, especially when comp...

The present work deals with the development of a mathematical model to provide the real-time information about important stages of the tapping operation of the iron making blast furnace. In the pre...

“A Portable Hearth in Great Expectations: Pip’s Search for Home in London” examines Charles Dickens’s uses of kitchen spaces to create and articulate Pip’s search for home, and thus himself. He doe...

Prehistoric fuel management and hearth functions are key research issues that have benefitted from the development of experimental and ethnoarchaeogical approaches aimed at providing interpretative models for archaeological fire and fuel studies.In this paper, we present a selection of ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological and ethnohistorical data mostly collected among Evenks and Athabascans of East Siberia and North America. Our aim is to question and discuss the relationship between fuel and hearth functions from an ethnoarchaeobotanical perspective: what are the criteria for selecting plant fuels? How archaeologically visible can these diverse fuel types be and what do they tell us about past fire-related activities?Our data shows that the contents of combustion structures result from multiple people-environment interactions at different levels, few of which are accessible to the archaeologist. Nevertheless, ethnoarchaeology, by fostering a reflection on taphonomy issues in the broad sense, active...

Increasing availability and advancements of aerial Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data have radically been shifting the way archeological surveys are performed. Unlike optical remote sensing i...

The key to excellent casthouse operation are low cost, high productivity, dry hearth and high casting rate while minimising the consumable material. The stable blast furnace operation requires prop...

The Williamson-Plainview site and the better known Milnesand site are two ancient bison (Bison antiquus) kill sites exposed during drought and wind erosion in the 1950s. The two sites are less than 500 m apart and remarkably similar, both extensive bone beds with scores of unfluted lanceolate Paleoindian projectile points: 85 Plainview and 47 Milnesand at Williamson-Plainview and 62 Milnesand and 10 Plainview at the type Milnesand site. Each site probably contained well over 30 bison from a late fall to early winter kill or kills based on data from Milnesand. Calcined bone from a hearth at Williamson-Plainview is dated to 10,282 ± 80 14C yr BP (12,065 cal yr BP; 11,935-12,180 cal yr BP), which fits well in the known age range of Plainview on the Southern High Plains. The similarities of the two sites and their archaeological assemblages further suggest that Plainview and Milnesand artifacts are essentially the same age.

The effect of CaO on the reduction behaviour of iron ore–coal composite pellets has been studied in a laboratory scale multi-layer bed rotary hearth furnace at 1250°C for 20 min. Reduced pellets have been characterised through weight loss, porosity measurement, phase analysis by XRD, and morphology study by SEM. The addition of CaO to the composite pellets showed different effects at different carbon levels. For higher carbon-containing pellets (C/Fe2O3 molar ratio at the upper stoichiometric level of 3), the addition of CaO increased the extent of reduction for all three layers significantly up to a certain limit (4 wt-%); and thereafter the degree of reduction is decreased with a further increase in CaO percentage in the pellets. For low carbon-containing pellets (C/Fe2O3 molar ratio of 1.66), the addition of CaO to the pellets did not show any beneficial effect.

The workshop of Zambana el Vato (region Trentino, Northern Italy), is dated to the period between the 7th-6th and the 5th century BC. Iron working activities are clearly recognizable from the various finds. Among them there are working slag, heated clay, fragments of hearth or forge, hammerscale and more residues that can be referred to iron technology. A number of selected specimens were sectioned and mounted for photomicroscopy to identify the structure and some of the mounted samples were also examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) using both a back scattered electron detector and energy dispersive (EDS) x-ray analysis. This paper presents the results of these studies. The hearths were regularly repaired, as their fragments were found mixed with working slag. The hammerscale samples indicate that there were three iron-working areas. The fragments of forge with traces of tuyeres indicate that bellows were employed. Refining slag was identified among the debris. This is particularly signi...

Using a set of high-quality radiocarbon dates, including three new dates from the Hanson site and one from the Folsom component of Hell Gap, we provide a revised estimate of the duration of the Folsom period. Limiting our sample to bone collagen samples pretreated using the XAD resin chromatographic or ultrafiltration techniques, calcined bone, and charcoal from hearth features, we show that Folsom sites fall within a limited range from 12,610 to 12,170 BP, or 440 years. This duration is considerably shorter than previous estimates. Additionally, we show that there is little correlation between the onset and termination of the Younger Dryas and the start and end of the Folsom complex. Finally, the youngest Clovis sites and the last of the Pleistocene megafauna correlate well in time, but are followed by a 100-year gap until the earliest Folsom sites, most likely a result of small sample size.

In blast furnace ironmaking hearth performance has a critical effect on the efficiency of the operations and the campaign duration. In this paper the relationship between hearth lining design and lining wear is analysed, based on plant data and research activities of Tata Steel Europe that is supported by information published elsewhere. Tools to model, monitor and visualise the hearth processes are discussed. Current hearth management practices are illustrated. It is noted that the varying process conditions make current campaigns less predictable than previous ones. The hearth lining design rules developed decades ago seem to be in need of revision.

Late Archaic archaeobotanical remains from the County Home site (33AT40), southeastern Ohio, are described. Measurements of chenopod (Chenopodium berlandieri) seed-coat thicknesses and marshelder (Iva annua) achene and kernel lengths from the site are indicative of domesticated types (ssp. jonesianum and var. macrocarpa, respectively) dating to ca. 3000 B.P. to 3600 B.P. Together, these specimens represent some of the earliest evidence of plant domestication outside the oak-hickory and oak-savannah forests of eastern North America. The recovery of these plants with other cultigens in hearths and earth ovens at the County Home site indicates that the timing for the arrival of the Initial Crop Complex in the Appalachian mixed forest of the middle Ohio Valley occurred earlier than previously documented. The results of this research contribute to the growing database of early plant domestication and a broader understanding of the origins of food production.

A stable and efficient blast furnace operation requires proper control of hot metal and slag drainage from the hearth. Many operational problems such as non-dry casts, blow outs, excessive hearth lining wear and low-blast intake arise when the liquid level in the hearth exceeds the critical limit where hearth coke and deadman start to float. Since the direct measurement of the hearth liquid level is practically impossible due to high temperature and pressure inside the furnace, it is therefore important to estimate the liquid level in the hearth and display it to the operators on real-time basis for efficient cast management. This paper presents a system, called hearth liquid level monitoring (LLM), which simulates the liquid level and drainage behaviour of the furnace hearth. It is based on the theoretical hot metal and slag generation rate from the specific oxygen rate and the computed drainage rate from torpedo radar signals and the slag flow measurement system. The system advises the blast furnace ope...

This article focuses on how to realize the still untapped potential of our oil and gas sector in order that the whole national economy moves toward a trajectory of stable growth and innovative development, so that economic policy can be shaped without separating out resource- and nonresource-based sectors as two irreconcilable alternatives.

Reflecting a growing engagement with theories of transnationalism and cosmopolitanism, ecocriticism has begun, in recent years, to move away from its disproportionate focus on Anglophone literature...

It is a pervasive notion—not just among Westerners—that Buddhist monks leave house and hearth to follow a spiritual path: this book intends to counter current misconceptions regarding the extent of...

Monitoring the erosive states of a hearth lining plays an important role in the operation and maintenance for an iron-making blast furnace. A simulation model of the calculating erosion profile is established. In computational algorithm, the step-length factor of moving boundary is optimally calculated based on optimised gradient descent method and the temperature of the feedback from thermocouples. Furthermore, the erosion profile and residual thickness of hearth lining are restructured by the moved boundaries. In order to validate the proposed model, taking a hearth of the known profile with the non-uniformed erosion as an example, the developed monitoring model computationally obtains the unknown boundary using the measured temperature of the sample points. Then, through comparing the actual erosion profile and residual thickness of the hearth lining with the calculated values, the model reliability and errors are discussed. The averaged value of the relative errors is about 4·50%.

In 2011 a burial was disturbed during work in Salisbury, a northern suburb of Adelaide, South Australia (SA). Subsequent archaeological excavation revealed a male human interment in a deep alluvial context with a number of unusual characteristics, including a bone point and several 'binding' hearths. A sample of femoral bone was submitted for AMS radiocarbon dating and bone collagen stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis. Dating determined that the burial was relatively recent (380+/-30 BP), contemporary with proposed shifts in the Kaurna's economic systems when 'mound sites' were inhabited, that is, over the past 1500 years. Stable isotope results indicated the individual consumed a distinct diet based on terrestrial foods, with an absence of marine protein. The location, mode and stratigraphic context of the burial, coupled with the stable isotope results, suggest this individual had a different diet to contemporary Kaurna men. The ethnographic record and knowledge provided by traditional owners suggested that his diet may have been connected to his status and position within Kaurna society as a 'medicine man' or 'sorcerer'.

This paper examines the evidence from Wales for the common but now largely forgotten custom in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of using hearthstone, rubbing stone, or the sap of green leaves to decorate the thresholds, hearths, and floors of farmhouses, cottages, and terraced houses on a daily or weekly basis. It traces the known history of the custom and attempts to place it into the development of homes and housework. The custom was thought by at least some of its practitioners to prevent evil but, whilst the patterns used were ancient, the apogee of the custom may well have post-dated the Industrial Revolution.

Temperature measurements of liquid pig iron coming out of a blast furnace are essential for estimating the thermal condition in the hearth. The temperature is generally monitored by a disposable th...

While many scholars have turned their attention to the decade-long armed conflict between Maoists and the Nepali state that ended in 2006, Judith Pettigrew’s book offers a different and valuable pe...

Refractory wear and skull growth on the hearth walls and the bottom of the blast furnace have been researched. A series of thermocouples were installed in the hearth, and the temperature measurements were recorded in a structured query language every minute. A heat transfer model was used to study the temperature evolution and hearth wear profile using a commercial software package (MATLAB version 5.0) based on computational fluid dynamics. The location of the 1150°C isotherm in the hearth lining has been calculated. An online monitoring tool was used to analyse the temperature distribution in the hearth and offers, to the plant operators, periodic information on the refractory state. Electromotive force (EMF) probes were installed in the hearth to estimate the variations in the liquid level in the hearth and to determine the thermal state (TS) evolution. Good correlation is seen between EMF and TS, and the EMF amplitudes in the different tapholes follow and even precede the local TS.

Excavations at the Fishing Bridge Point site (48YE381) at Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming reveal stratified Early Archaic, Middle Archaic, Late Archaic, and Late Prehistoric period occupations. Results of specialized studies such as lithics, X-ray fluorescence, protein residue, pollen, ethnobotanical, and sub-surface imaging contribute to existing information regarding prehistoric human use of high-elevation lake basins within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Among the significant findings are the remains of the only radiocarbon-dated Early Archaic hearth feature excavated within Yellowstone National Park. Lithic raw material use patterns of Native Americans in the Early Archaic occupation greatly contrast those from the nearby Late Paleoindian Osprey Beach site, suggesting changing material use patterns at the beginning of the Holocene at Yellowstone Lake. Late Prehistoric lithic material use patterns also contrast those of the preceding Middle and Late Archaic periods.

Tom Nicholson presents traces from his ‘Unfinished monument to Batman's Treaty’ (2011–), an ongoing public sculpture project engaging Batman's Treaty, its history and meanings. The work takes as its starting point Melbourne's first chimney, the chimney built for John Batman by William Buckley. The central component of ‘Unfinished monument’ is one A4 sheet of paper, a sheet of paper which functions as a monument plaque. Melbournians are invited to attach these plaques to the chimneys in their own living rooms. In this way, the city's chimneys are gradually re-inscribed as commemorations of the city's first chimney, becoming parts of an ever-growing monument to the city's conflicted origins, potentially as vast as the city itself. ‘Unfinished monument’ grapples with the complex meanings of Batman's Treaty through the form of the hearth, implicating the Treaty and its ramifications in the most intimate and convivial spaces of our urban environment, our living rooms.

An Aboriginal hearth near Port Augusta has been dated to ca 40,000 years old, making it the oldest known site in South Australia (SA). It is also one of only two sites in southern Australia and one of only seven locations in Australia to demonstrate such antiquity (cf. David et al. 2011; O'Connor and Veth 2006). Since first observing the hearth in 2010, it has been entirely eroded by natural processes. This paper describes the find and confirms the urgent need for (1) systematic archaeological and palaeoecological research on the Quaternary dunes in this region, and (2) conservation and protection of these fragile open sites.

Domestic hearth focused concepts of kinship are used together with settlement pattern data and developmental histories to explain differences in the social architecture of proto-Arikara bearers of the Initial and Extended variants of the Coalescent tradition and proto-Mandan-Hidatsa agents of the Initial, Extended, and Terminal variants of the Middle Missouri tradition.

In connection with the work to find the Fulford battlesite, it is recognised that the techniques required to find the site of a conflict are different from those employed to confirm and research a battlesite. Access to museum storeroom collections allowed the surface fragments from the investigation to be interpreted and also revealed that iron was in all probability gathered together and reprocessed immediately after the battle. Thus, hearth debris is a potential pointer to locate other sites because the metal-working sites at Fulford coincided with the area of action of the battle suggested by other, independent avenues of research.

In 1963, Betty Friedan's now classic The Feminine Mystique identified the American home—or, more accurately, the suburban dwelling nestled within one of the thousands of developments that had been ...

In Maoists at the Hearth, Judith Pettigrew ethnographically reveals the quotidian qualities of violence perpetuated during Nepal's Civil War (1996–2006). Her book is a welcome departure from the su...

In 1992 the Much Wenlock cruck terrace 25–8 Barrow Street was shown to have comprised five cells dendrochronologically dated to 1435. One suggested interpretation was that the terrace was a row of medieval almshouses. At the time a further terrace of crucks at 16–18A High Street was suspected, but only since the whole row became fully residential has detailed examination been possible. Six bays survive, although numbering on the trusses indicates that it originally had eight bays. Investigation has revealed a purpose-built row of single-bay — or possibly two-bay — dwellings open to the roof and originally heated with open hearths. The similarity between the structures and known medieval almshouses may strengthen the possibility that either or both rows had an eleemosynary purpose.

In the blast furnace process, the hearth is subject to chemical and physical erosion. A mathematical model for the prediction of the refractory material thickness in the wall and bottom area of the hearth (MUSA) is presented. By combining online reading of temperatures and historical data, the erosion profile in the hearth lining and the thickness of any skull can be calculated by the model. For the prediction of erosion and skull profile, a heat conduction problem was considered: numerical results are presented and discussed.