Birkengang zinc hut
The Zinkhütte Birkengang or Friedrich-Wilhelm-Hütte was an Eschweiler zinc hut that was built from 1845 to 1846 by the Eschweiler Bergwerksverein EBV and the entrepreneur Matthias Ludolph Schleicher on the upper Birkengang in the immediate vicinity of the Christine shaft of the Birkengang mine with a railway connection to the railway. At the same time, the Centrum mine increased its daily hard coal output by fifty percent. In the Eschweiler Hütten and the Stolberger Hütte zinc was afterReduction process won, for which coal was necessary. At the time of its peak operation, the Birkengang zinc smelter had 36 reduction furnaces. In order to keep coal production at a high level, the mining facilities had to be expanded. In order to compensate for the increased cost of this, it was decided to increase coal prices by ten percent. When the Prussian government then lowered the import tariff for Belgian coal to a quarter, this led the EBV into a financial crisis.
To overcome this crisis, the EBV sold its lead and calamine works, whereby the zinc works Birkengang and Velau passed into the ownership of the " Eschweiler Gesellschaft " in 1848 . Shortly after the merger of the Eschweiler Gesellschaft and the Stolberger Gesellschaft , operations were stopped in 1926, a few years later the hut buildings were demolished and in 1935 the district of Birkengang was separated from Eschweiler to Stolberg. At the time of operation, there was a rail connection from the Stolberg freight station via the Steinfurt zinc works to the Birkengang zinc works. Essentially, the coal from the EBV to operate the furnaces, the zinc ores, the outgoing products from the manufacture as well as the disposal of the production waste and the coal ash were transported.
Birch gang oven
In the Birkengang zinc smelter , a special smelting furnace was developed using the reduction process, the heating of which worked with a regenerative heat chamber system, which resulted in very good heat utilization. This type furnace was birch gear oven (engl. Rhenish Furnace = Rheinischer furnace ) called and is regarded as a modified type of the so-called Silesian furnace . Beyond Eschweiler and Germany, it was used in smelters. Since the chemical reduction of zinc oxide to zinc , a metal with a relatively low boiling point of 1180 K (907 ° C), produces zinc vapor, the process is also known as distillation (cf. distillation furnace ).
Literature and Sources
- Bailly, Peter et al. Holzapfel, Franz Josef: Discover Eschweiler , Ed. Eifelverein Eschweiler 2002, pp. 21-27.
- Bongart, Ferdinand: The shafts of the pit center of the EBV in Eschweiler . In: Series of publications by the Eschweiler Geschichtsverein, vol. 11, p. 15ff, Eschweiler 1989.
- Erdmann, Walter: Eschweiler coal already in Roman times? - On the history of coal mining in the Indemulde . In: Series of publications by the Eschweiler Geschichtsverein, vol. 5, p. 27ff, Eschweiler 1983.
- Kauling, Gregor u. Oediger, Hermann-Lambert: Coal and iron in the Inderevier - the early industrial center in Eschweiler , ed. vd RWTH Aachen, Aachen 1989.
- Küpper, Simon: The Eschweiler Kohlberg . In: Series of publications by the Eschweiler Geschichtsverein, vol. 2, p. 14ff, Eschweiler 1979.
- Willms, Christa: Eschweiler, a mining and industrial town of the 19th century , Wiss. Work at the Economic Geography Institute, ed. vd University of Cologne, Cologne 1958.
Coordinates: 50 ° 47 ′ 3.5 ″ N , 6 ° 13 ′ 50.2 ″ E