Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 8.9: A small brick factory with an open kiln from the middle of the 19th century in
Scandinavia. Source: Broch 1848.
kiln. It is interesting to note that development of the kiln and the baking oven
have run parallel.
The open charcoal kiln is the earliest type, used in smaller brick works as late
as the early twentieth century. It consists of two permanent, parallel kiln walls in
brick. At the bottom of the walls or between them at the ends there are a series
of openings for feeding the fuel. Clay blocks to be fired are stacked up according
to a very exact system. The top layer is a solid layer of ready-fired bricks with
some openings for the smoke. They are then covered with earth. The firing takes
about two days of intensive burning. The bricks are left in the kiln to cool down
slowly over a period of several days before the earth and the bricks are removed.
A brick factory should have two or three kilns to guarantee continuous pro-
duction. Firing in an open charcoal kiln is not very economical with regard to
energy consumption. If production is local, the compensation for this is that
transport energy is drastically reduced.
A small, unusual and totally new version of the open charcoal kiln has recent-
ly been developed in the Middle East. The kiln is in fact a whole house, which is
fired. The clay blocks are stacked up into walls and vaults in their air-dried state.
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