ThE InDuStRiAl ReVoLuTiOn Coal


The steam engine required two things: iron to build it and coal for burning in it. Both of these were plentiful in areas of Britain. Wherever deposits of coal and iron were located, large factories also grew. Coal had many uses during the Industrial Revolution and it was always in great demand.


Uses of coal 1. Coal was used in homes for heating and cooking. 2. Coal was burnt to create steam to power the steam engines in factories. 3. Locomotive trains and steamboats were invented at this time. These trains and boats needed coal to power their engines.


Iron


Iron was made by smelting (heating the rock in a furnace until the iron can be extracted from the rock). Initially charcoal (burnt timber) was used as fuel in the furnaces. As the forests of Britain began to disappear, a new fuel was needed to feed the furnaces. The sulphur in coal made it unsuitable to use as a fuel. However, in 1709, Abraham Darby tried to bake coal at a very high temperature and produced coke. This method removed almost all of the sulphur from the coal. As coal was plentiful, this discovery meant that iron smelting became far cheaper and so more widespread. Iron could now be used in the making of machines, bridges and trains.


Iron and steel


The iron made by Abraham Darby was called pig-iron and was of poor quality as the metal still had impurities in it, even after smelting. At the end of the eighteenth century Henry Cort invented a method of iron production called puddling and rolling. This required stirring the iron and then burning off any impurities. The iron was then passed through large rollers. This hardened the iron. Cort’s method made better quality iron and it was also cheaper.


Finally in 1856, an inventor named Henry Bessemer developed his converter. This machine added a metal called manganese to iron, forced air through the mixture and then burnt off any impurities. The result was a new metal called steel.


Fig 11.17 Puddling and rolling – Henry Cort’s method of iron production.


11


Fig 11.16 Coal deposits in Britain were plentiful during the Industrial Revolution.


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