At MIT, an old African smelt ing method is being revived

SURFACE MINING

Apprentices in class 3.094 (Materials in Human Experience) spent two months constructing the furnace or bloomery per Mossi customs from Burkina Faso. At MIT, an old African smelting method is being revived

One warm May day, the smoke rising from East Campus could have easily been mistaken for a barbecue going on in the courtyard. Burgers were indeed cooking on the grill. However, a mud-and-straw iron smelting furnace was where the smoke was coming from, making it a considerably more uncommon sight on the MIT campus or anywhere else outside of West Africa.

Apprentices in class 3.094 (Materials in Human Experience) spent two months constructing the furnace or bloomery per Mossi customs from Burkina Faso. The furnace was a cylinder that was five feet high. Two tubes, each into a huge pot covered in goatskin and pumped by students and volunteers wearing T-shirts and polo shirts, extended from an aperture on the lower third of the cylinder. From the top end, dancing orange flames and billowing grey smoke emanated.

According to Mike Tarkanian, senior lecturer in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, "the goal of this segment is to teach individuals about materials through archaeological materials." Roman concrete, the substance used to build historic structures like the Pantheon in Rome, was the main topic of the first part of the class, which was instructed by associate professor of civil and environmental engineering Admir Masic.

The second half of the talk focused on the lengthy history of iron smelting in Africa, how it was used to fight wars and till fields, and some current issues with iron and steel manufacturing, which is one of the greatest carbon dioxide generators. And now they're discovering just how challenging this 4,000-year-old procedure is.