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Lime Production in Ireland
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Read
about lime production
in County Antrim in the 19th century. |
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Lime kilns across the country basically followed the same design consisting of an egg shaped chamber 3 to 7 metres in diameter, with a hole at the bottom allowing access of air for combustion and the removal of the quick lime, this was constructed of bricks inside a square stone tower the height of which varied and may have been between 4 and 8 meteres high. The kiln was often built into a bank allowing the fuel and limestone to be easily loaded into the top of the kiln. This was a batch process each burning may have taken as much as four days, so allowing for filling, burning, cooling and removal each batch probably took a week, for the process to work efficiently it was necessary that the kiln attained a temperature of 900 degrees c. Later continuous kilns came to be used, in these fuel and limestone were added continually, today some 3.5 million ton of lime is produced in Ireland principally for the cement industry, modern kiln's consist od a horizontal rotary chamber in which the limestone is introduced at one end the quicklime emerging at the other as the chamber slowly rotates, there are about 10 of these kilns in operation in Ireland. Lime can also be produced by burning sea shells, in Samuel Lewis' Topographical Directory of County Down, 1834 he describes Wood Island in Strangford Lough below. 'Wood island, also in the parish of Tullynakill, containing 16 acres, and on which are large beds of shells, from 50 to 60 feet above the level of the sea, that are converted into excellent lime by burning' Limestone (calcium carbonate) is a sedimentary rock produced largely in the marine environment from the shells of sea creatures over geologic time periods.When heated (or “burnt”) the limestone is converted to quicklime (calcium oxide) and a gas (carbon dioxide). Quicklime will react with water to give “slaked lime” (calcium hydroxide). Good example of a lime kiln,
See also early Irish farms and the kelp industry. |
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