Paul-François Huart-Chapel (1770–1850), was a Belgian industrialist and politician. He was born in

Charleroi Charleroi (, , ; ) is a city and a municipality of Wallonia, located in the province of Hainaut, Belgium. It is the largest city in both Hainaut and Wallonia. The city is situated in the valley of the Sambre, in the south-west of Belgium, not ...

. He married Mary Chapel, the daughter of an industrialist. In 1806 he inherited the factories of the Chapel family. He introduced a reverbatory furnace for melting metal in 1807 and then in 1821 he used the first

Puddling furnace Puddling is the process of converting pig iron to bar (wrought) iron in a coal fired reverberatory furnace. It was developed in England during the 1780s. The molten pig iron was stirred in a reverberatory furnace, in an Redox, oxidizing enviro ...

in Belgium (with J.M. Orban). Shortly after John Cockerill had built the first blast furnace in Belgium in Liege, he built a coke fired blast furnace in 1827 in

. It was 12m high and produced 6 to 10tonnes of

pig iron Pig iron, also known as crude iron, is an intermediate good used by the iron industry in the production of steel. It is developed by smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a high carbon content, typically 3.8–4.7%, along with si ...

a day. Between 1831 and 1834 he was Mayor of Charleroi. He died aged 80.

References

Politicians from Charleroi Businesspeople from the Austrian Netherlands Belgian industrialists Mayors of places in Belgium 1770 births 1850 deaths {{Wallonia-politician-stub