Upgrading the Glass Bead Making Furnace for Ease of Operation: A Case Study of the Masaga Glass Guild

The glass bead making furnace of the Masaga Glass Guild in Bida, Niger State Nigeria was evaluated in comparison to those of Ghana (Krobo) and India (Firozabad); it was discovered that the Masaga furnace falls short of an efficient system for sustainable work that should facilitate appreciable productivity. Furthermore, the furnace is not built with refractory bricks, implying that it has a short life span; the furnace is operated by hand-worked traditional cloth bellows requiring sustained and strenuous efforts over a relatively long period of time; Following this assessment, efforts were directed at modifying the furnace by producing design drawings of the modified furnace, design and production of refractory bricks from the design drawing, constructing the modified furnace structure using the refractory bricks, producing suitable furniture for the furnace and subsequently, devising a suitable mechanical blower device as an alternative to the manually worked bellows for the supply of combustion air. Consequently, a furnace was developed which eliminates the strenuous manual working of the bellows as well as the bellow operator and ensures that a single individual can work unassisted at the furnace in the process of glassware production.

Research of the efficiency of the one-step process for producing carbon steels on the territory of modern Belarus in the pre-industrial period. Foundry production and metallurgy

The article describes experiments on the reconstruction of the technology of the one-step process of obtaining iron-carbon alloys in furnaces based on archaeological sources. It contains the description of furnace design, metallurgical process technology and raw materials preparation. The process of refining the iron bloom by forging is described. Scientifically grounded assumptions are made about possible technological methods of obtaining steels in the pre-industrial period on the territory of modern Belarus.

INTRINSIC PARAMETERS OF DRY CHOPPED MISCANTHUS FOR COLD PARTICLE DYNAMIC MODELING

Miscanthus is a bioenergy crop that is very easy to cultivate. It has high volatile content with an average energy value of about 18.8 MJ/kg on a dry basis. With the benefits mentioned above, Miscanthus is potential as a fuel for the suspended furnace. Therefore, the furnace design for the Miscanthus particle needs to be developed immediately. A relatively fast and low-cost technique to develop a burner furnace design is the modeling. This study aims to determine the intrinsic parameter values of dry Miscanthus particles needed in cold particle dynamic modeling. The various reasonable experimental techniques were used to obtain these parameter’s values. Then, a series of simulations and experiments of dry chopped Miscanthus dynamic in a special burner was conducted to assess the conformity of these values. The intrinsic parameters values of dry chopped Miscanthus obtained are as follows; shape factor (fs) 0.52, true particle density (ρp) 245 kg m-3, minimum, maximum, and mean particle diameters (dp) 106, 9520, and 1384 µm respectively, and spread parameter (n) 1.22. Qualitatively, the particle dynamic simulation results, using RSM and k-e models, showed similar particle pathlines to the experiment results, in terms of the frequency and intersection of the helical structure formed in the burner cylinder. It indicates that the intrinsic parameter values obtained in this study are reliable results and can be used for further simulation works. In addition, particle dynamics experiments and simulations also revealed that the particle pathline in the burner cylinder tend to move near the cylinder wall in a helical pattern; a single helix pattern in a single tangential inlet burner and a double helix pattern in a double tangential inlets burner. Regardless of the effect of the tangential inlet number, the helical pattern in the burner cylinder was also influenced by the initial swirl number (ISN) of the flow. The lower the ISN, the lower the helical frequency formed and vice versa. This study also proved that at low to moderate swirl intensities, the k-e turbulent model can be relied upon to model particle dynamics in a cyclone burner.