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The bloomery furnace, which was typical of Central and Northern Europe in the La Tène culture and in the period of Roman influence, as well as the iron smelting process became of interest to Polish researchers in 1955. The works of Mieczyslaw Radwan such as "Ziemia" ["Earth"] and "Hutnik" ["Ironworker"] published in 1936 and 1937 respectively show the state of the knowledge at the time. The first of these works does not seem to present the complexity of the metallurgical process which took place at the foot of the wiê-tokrzyskie Mountains. He wrote, metal sponge saturated with slag gathered at the bottom, under a layer of slag [1]. In his second work he presented a view that metallurgical operations were not complex. It was necessary to dig up a pit in the ground, which was then sometimes covered in clay. Then fire was lit and when it was strong enough the pit was filled with powdered ore. A natural draft was used and that is why the pits were dug up on the slopes. Perhaps hand bellows were used. Metal sponge saturated in slag gathered under the lower layer of slag" [2].This Polish metallurgist was not the only one to think that. German researchers, who in 1907 analyzed different aspects of bloomery furnace stations with slag blocks in Silesian Tarchalice, claimed that metallic iron should gather at the bottom of the furnace. They could not imagine a different way of smelting iron. A similar view was presented by a Czech archaeologist J.A. Jira [3].

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ThE EffEcT of Slag on ThE EffEcTIvEnESS of PhoSPhoruS rEmoval from fErrouS alloyS conTaInIng carbon, chromIum and nIckElThe aim of this study was to determine the impact of slag composition on phosphorus removal from ferrous solutions containing carbon, chromium and nickel. Additions of cryolite, Na3AlF6, were applied for better fluxing and higher phosphate capacity of the slag. An X-ray analysis of final slags formed during dephosphorization of ferrous solutions containing chromium and nickel with CaO-CaF2 or CaO-CaF2-Na3AlF6 mixtures of different chemical compositions was carried out. The equilibrium composition of the liquid and the solid phase while cooling the slags from 1673K to 298K was computed using FactSage 6.2 software. The performed equilibrium computations indicated that the slags were not entirely liquid at those temperatures. The addition of cryolite causes a substantial increase of the liquid phase of the slag. It also has a favourable effect on the dephosphorization grade of hot metal. The obtained results were statistically processed and presented in the form of regression equations.