The disintegration of refractory brick by carbon monoxide

In experimental work carried on at East St. Louis, Illinois in 1916 and 1917, with a furnace of commercial size for the electrothermic dry distillation of zinc ores, a difficulty that developed was the destruction of the firebrick lining in certain parts of the large condenser. The condenser was satisfactory in other ways, yielding a large proportion of the zinc as liquid metal, with no blue powder; but in order to obtain a proper length of service from the condenser it became necessary to find and overcome the cause of the disintegration of the lining ... it will be evident that an iron-free refractory material would probably be suitable. To demonstrate this and to test the effect of carbon monoxide on various refractory materials a series of tests was carried out at the Mississippi Vally Station of the Bureau of Mines, in cooperation with the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy. These tests are described in the following pages --Introduction, Pages 1-3