Kiln facts for kids

Gold Kiln, Victoria, Australia

A kiln, originally pronounced "kill", with the "n" silent, is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven, that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or chemical changes.

Kilns have been used for millennia to turn objects made from clay into pottery, tiles and bricks. Various industries use rotary kilns for pyroprocessing—to calcinate ores, to calcinate limestone to lime for cement, and to transform many other materials.

Uses of kilns

Pit fired pottery was produced for thousands of years before the earliest known kiln, which dates to around 6000 BC, and was found at the Yarim Tepe site in modern Iraq. Neolithic kilns were able to produce temperatures greater than 900 °C (1652 °F).

Uses include:

Walters Ranch Hop Kiln

Lime Kiln

Bottle kiln

Annealing, fusing and deforming glass, or fusing metallic oxide paints to the surface of glass
Heat treatment for metallic workpieces
Ceramics
Brickworks
Melting metal for casting
Smelting ore to extract metal
Pyrolysis of chemical materials
Heating limestone with clay in the manufacture of Portland cement, the Cement kiln
Heating limestone to make quicklime or calcium oxide, the Lime kiln
Heating gypsum to make plaster of Paris
For cremation (at high temperature)
Drying of tobacco leaves
Drying malted barley for brewing and other fermentations
Drying hops for brewing (known as a hop kiln or oast house)
Drying corn (grain) before grinding or storage
Drying green lumber so it can be used immediately
Drying wood for use as firewood
Heating wood to the point of pyrolysis to produce charcoal

Images for kids

Indian brick kiln
A traditional Cambodian kiln at Khmer Ceramics & fine arts centre in Siem Reap Cambodia
Charcoal kilns, California
Farnham Pottery, Wrecclesham, Surrey with the preserved bottle kiln on the right of photo
One of the tunnels where the trains loaded the lime from the grates at the kiln bottoms
This specific example is a "car kiln"; the base is on wheels and has been rolled out of the kiln - this helps with loading and unloading the kiln
CAD representation of a Beehive Kiln
Brickmaking kilns, Mekong delta. The cargo boat in the foreground is carrying the rice chaff used as fuel for the firing
A wood fired pottery kiln in Hoi An Vietnam
A two-story porcelain kiln with furnaces in Sèvres, France circa 1880