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Show The Story of Garfield Liquid Copper here molten metal Is being drawn from the rever-beratory rever-beratory furnace at Garfield, orie of the many process in converting rock to metal. .(Editor's Note: ThiB Is the third of a series of eight srlcles titled "The Story of Garfield.") The Garfield smelter is one of the state's large consumers of natural en, consuming approximately 5,800,000,000 cubic feet yearly. This is enough gas to supply a fair sized city with its domestic requirements, and is used largely in the reverbera-tory reverbera-tory furnace. The reverberatory furnace is the second major step in the process of smelting. After the concentrates and ore charge is subjected to a roasting operation, the calcined material that is produced is then sent to a gas-fired reverberatory furnace having a temperature of from 2,200 to 2,800 degrees Fahren- , heit. As the charge melts the cop per, iron and sulphur combine to form a heavy liquid which settles to the bottom, while the gangue waste materials form a slag which i floats on top. The slag is drawn off and poured into round cone-like cars and transported to the slag dump where it is discharged over the dump. The copper-iron-sulphuide prod uct, which is called copper matte, is drawn off the reverberatory furnace fur-nace and transferred to the copper converters. This transfer from the reverberatory to the converter is interesting to watch. The red molten metal is drawn out into a small ditch, not unlike a drainage ditch, which is lined with silica. After traveling about 50 feet in this ditch the molten stream trickels its way into a huge ladle. The ladle is then picked up by a huge overhead crane and dumped into the converter. con-verter. All through this process skilled workers move quickly and surely to their various tasks. American Smelting and Refining company employs em-ploys over 1,000 men at the Garfield plant and they have distinguished themselves by having won the Army-Navy coveted "E" award for their remarkable record in keeping up the flow of metal into the war program. (The fourth article in this series will be published later in these columns.) |