These kilns make potash. So I guess I will not need a batcher.
It's a lime kiln. The idea being that you add amounts of coke and flux sized limestone, burn it and out comes potash that can be used to make caustic soda and sodium cloride. Dry ice and clorine are natural by-products of this process, which I believe takes a lot of salt water and is called the Solvay method.
My explanation of what Michigan Alkali did over 100 years ago is loosely based on the facts... and what a rich and interesting history the John Baptiste Ford family leave us from the turn of the last century. First a plate glass maker in Pennsylvania, then,
at age 90 he started his chemical company in Wyandotte, Michigan and began quarrying the limestone 500 miles to the north in Alpena and Rogers City. He had a fleet of freighters... but the first few pre-shipping years of production, 1900-1910, were railroad INTENSIVE.... trainloads of limestone flux hauled down the east side of Lake Michigan by the D&M and MCRR.
His own lines, the Wyandotte Terminal Railroad and Wyandotte Southern Railroad basically ran around the factory and connected with the DTSL and NYC lines....
He branched out by forming the JB Ford Company, selling household and industrial cleaners around the world... having even a plant in New Zealand.
Indeed the largest limestone quarry in the world, on the shores of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world.... feeding, by rail, a massive chemical works (and all BEFORE the EPA) is indeed worthy of modelling!
MA Proto
Quarry Proto
Michigan Alkali became Wyandotte Chemical in the 1940's.... and the property and the original buildings and track are now owned and used by none other than BASF.
No, not makin' bricks.... Brakie!
I am, however, gloriously tearing up the land and polluting it as fast as I can make a buck!
Oh... THOSE were the days...