Excerpt from The Electric Furnace
The very high range of temperatures attainable in electric furnaces has opened up a large field of chemistry which was not previously accessible. In the case of processes in which the electric current merely acts as a heating agent and is dissociated from any electrolytic action, products such as artificial graphite, the highly refractory metals in a compact form, and a large series of compounds of carbon with metals, have been isolated for the first time. In many cases these products have received an industrial application which has already ranged them in the forefront of the world's manufacturing processes.
With other substances, notably certain classes of steel and iron and ferro-alloys, aluminium and sodium, the agency of electricity applied to chemical processes, has led to a very great simplification and cheapening of the manufacture, while with yet another class of products, such as copper and zinc, these methods have enabled materials to be prepared of a degree of purity unattainable by any other means.
The electric furnace, in facilitating the production of a range of temperatures well beyond that attainable by any other known method, has thus inaugurated a new department of chemical industry. On account of the rapid progress of this branch of industrial electro-chemistry, it has until recently been generally overlooked that an extension of electrical methods of heating of no less importance has taken place in another direction, viz. in chemical and metallurgical operations, including those with both ferrous and non-ferrous metals for the production of heat at temperatures which are well within the range of ordinary fuel-heating methods.
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