Metallurgical furnace

Furnaces have been a central piece of equipment throughout the history of metallurgy; processing metals with heat is even its own engineering specialty known as pyrometallurgy.

Furnaces of this type include: Even smaller, pre-industrial bloomeries possess significant thermal mass.

Raising a cold furnace to the necessary temperature for smelting iron requires a significant amount of energy, regardless of modern technology.

In traditional bloomeries, several rounds of fuel would need to be burnt away before the furnace was ready to accept a charge of ore.

[2][3] A reverberatory furnace still exposes the reaction chamber, where metal or ore is combined with reagents, to a stream of exhaust gases.