Metallurgical coke is used not only as a fuel, but also as a reducing agent in iron ore smelting process which takes place in a blast furnace.

Since smoke-producing constituents are released during the coking of coal, metallurgical coke forms a needed fuel for furnaces and stoves in which conditions are not as suitable as it would be good to complete the bituminous coal burning process itself. Coke may be burned with little smoke or even no smoke under combustion conditions. Bituminous coal on the other hand produces much smoke.

Coke was also discovered by an accident as a superior heat shielding material when it is combined with some other materials. Thus it’s used on NASA’s Apollo program space vehicles. That material its final form was called AVCOAT 5026-39 and has been used even most recently as the heat shielding material on the Mars Pathfinder vehicle. Although metallurgical coke isn’t used for space shuttles, NASA is preparing from coke and other materials a brand new heat shield for its next generation space craft, called Orion, which is planned to be completed in 2014.

Coke is also used for fuel gases production. These useful gases require a very careful handling because of the carbon monoxide poisoning risk. One fact is really interesting – US and UK nomenclature of fuel gases differ a little one from another. It appears that the names have different meanings in the USA and the UK. Most technicians and metallurgist in the world use UK nomenclature, in which a water gas is a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide and a wood gas is a mixture of nitrogen, hydrogen and carbon monoxide.