In Austria, more than any other country, peat has been employed in the manufacture of iron. In Bavaria, Prussia, Wirtemberg, Hanover, and Sweden, and latterly in Great Britain, peat has been put to the same use. The general results of experience, are as follows:--
Peat can only be employed to advantage, when wood and mineral coal are expensive, or of poor quality.
Peat can be used in furnaces adapted for charcoal, but not in those built for mineral coal.
Good air-dry peat, containing 20 to 30 _per cent._ of water, in some cases may replace a share of charcoal in the high furnace.
At Pillersee, in Austria, spathic iron ore has been reduced by a mixture of fir-wood charcoal, and air-dry peat in the proportions of three parts by bulk of the former to one of the latter. The use of peat was found to effect a considerable saving in the outlay for fuel, and enabled the production to be somewhat increased, while the excellence of the iron was in no way impaired. The peat was of the best quality, and was worked and moulded by hand.
When the ore is refractory and contains impurities that must be fluxed and worked off in slag, a large proportion of air-dry peat cannot be used to advantage, because the evaporation of the water in it consumes so much heat, that the requisite temperature is not easily attained.
At Achthal, in Bavaria, air-dry peat was employed in 1860, to replace a portion of the fir wood charcoal, which had been used for smelting an impure clay-iron-stone: the latter fuel having become so dear, that peat was resorted to as a make shift. Instead of one "sack," or 33 cubic feet of charcoal, 24 cubic feet of charcoal and 15 cubic feet of peat were employed in each charge, and the quantity of ore had to be diminished thereby, so that the yield of pig was reduced, on the average, by about 17 _per cent._ In this case the quality of the iron, when worked into bar, was injured by the use of peat, obviously from an increase of its content of phosphorus. The exclusive use of air-dry peat as fuel in the high furnace, appears to be out of the question.
At Ransko, in Bohemia, _kiln-dried peat_, nearly altogether free from water, has been employed in a high furnace, mixed with but one-third its bulk of charcoal, and in cupola furnaces for re-melting pig, full-dried peat has been used alone, answering the purpose perfectly.