US116065A - Improvement in refining iron and steel - Google Patents

Description

PATENT OFFICE.

WILLIAM H. KIMBALL, OF BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

IMPROVE MENTYIN REFINING IRON AND STEEL.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 116,065, dated June 20, 1871.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, WILLIAM H. KIMBALL, of Boston, in the county of Suffolk and State of Massachusetts, have made an invention of certain Improvements in the Process of Refin ing Iron or Steel; and do hereby declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description thereof, sufficient to enable others to make and use the same.

My invention as herein explained consists in the employment, in proper proportion, with the ordinary arbors or fluxes used in refining iron, of the chemical salt known as bromide of po tassium. This salt of bromide of potassium is to be employed with lamp-black or charcoal, manganese, and iron, these latter being the component elements now usually adopted in character of the iron employed may render desirable, I make use, in combination with the above-named ingredients, of a small proportion of cyanide of potassium, and of pulveri zed fluor-spar, to aid the fusibility of the flux, and to cause the scale to separate from the surface of the steel.

' I am aware that the iodide of potassium has formerly been employed in the process of refining iron, but this material is expensive, and I have found that, in addition to being much cheaper, the bromide of potassium, (which is a difl'erent sa1t,) owing to its greater volatility, surely and eiiectually carries ofl' the impurities of the iron and fluxes. For this and other reasons the steel made by the use of the bromide has been found to be considerably tougher and finer grained than when made by the iodide.

: Ola 5m. I cl aim Witn esses:

Enw. GRIFFITH, FRED. OURTIs.