- Joined
- Jan 2, 2017
- Messages
- 47
- Reaction score
- 151
- Points
- 33
- Location
- Belgium
- Website
- www.urbanrelics.be
This was a really fun explore, even though it was quite challenging... It was challenging on a photography level, because the highest part of the tower was pitch black. Every photo we made up there had to be made with additional light. Luckily, to this end I always carry a small, but strong construction lamp in my back pack. It was also challenging, because we were there in the middle of a heat wave, 170 feet above ground level, separated from the outside by nothing more then some thin metal sheet, which had been basking in the sun all day. It was like photographing in a sauna, only with fewer nekkid people... ? On the other hand it was really a great explore, because apparently vandals and idiots with cans of spray paint don't venture so high up in the dark. So everything we found there was still very intact.
A bit of background:
Due to the increasing demand for cokes in the steel industry and the resulting rise in prices, people started looking for a more cost-efficient technique. This was found by injecting pulverized coal as a replacement for the heavy oil used until then in the melting process. Pulverized coal is mixed in the primary air supply and blown into the blast furnace. The most noteworthy aspect of this method is that it is possible to use cheaper coal in the system and to replace expensive cokes, thus significantly reducing costs. The process was developed in the 19th century, but was only industrially implemented in the 1970s. In this blast furnace, the method was only introduced in the mid-1990s. In the factory in these photos, pulverized coal was produced until the closure of the nearby blast furnace in 2008.
A bit of background:
Due to the increasing demand for cokes in the steel industry and the resulting rise in prices, people started looking for a more cost-efficient technique. This was found by injecting pulverized coal as a replacement for the heavy oil used until then in the melting process. Pulverized coal is mixed in the primary air supply and blown into the blast furnace. The most noteworthy aspect of this method is that it is possible to use cheaper coal in the system and to replace expensive cokes, thus significantly reducing costs. The process was developed in the 19th century, but was only industrially implemented in the 1970s. In this blast furnace, the method was only introduced in the mid-1990s. In the factory in these photos, pulverized coal was produced until the closure of the nearby blast furnace in 2008.
