The development of the blast furnace metallurgy of the iron in Slovakia

and wood for charcoal were the prerequisites for the development of
iron metallurgy in Slovakia. Since the 16th century, the bloomery
process used in iron metallurgy has been gradually replaced by the
blast furnace process. This new process was more economical, but it
required extremely high investments. The steam engine replaced the
unreliable water power in the blowing process, and coke replaced
charcoal. Especially due to economic problems, the first blast
furnaces in Slovakia started to be built about two hundred years
later than in Western Europe. Despite the promising start, the
installation of steam engines was lagging. A major drawback was
the lack of road and rail networks combined with the absence of
local coking coal. The introductory part of the paper compares
chronologically the individual stages of the development of blast
furnace production in Slovakia and abroad. Next, the paper presents
comprehensive results of the analysis of samples of the slag found
at 59 sites of extinct ironworks with a blast furnace, localised until
now. The samples were analysed by metallographic, chemical,
spectral (secondary and trace elements), and X-ray methods. In the
past, these data were published with territorial restrictions and
mostly in a language other than Slovak. The contents of secondary
and trace elements in slag from individual sites using cluster
analysis and also metallic iron content in slags categorised
according to owners of the blast furnaces and the slag basicity are
compared.