Sulphuric acid kilns where hydrogen was burnt to release sulphur dioxide. 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Sulphuric acid kilns where hydrogen was burnt to release sulphur dioxide.
It’s not clear in these pictures but these kilns are not mounted vertically, but are on a 10 degree slope from the horizontal. The combination of the slope and the rotation of the kilns causes the mixture of anhydrite, etc to work its way down the kiln until it is discharged.
If the Kilns had been mounted vertically the man standing on the platform by the tyre would have been quite an acrobat. Further down the kiln towards the centre is the drive gear wheel. The kilns ran freely on the trunions being kept in place by the camber of the trunion which could be altered to move the kiln up or down slightly therefore keeping it centred on the trunions.
They are the new sulphuric acid kilns.
Sulphur is burned to produce Sulphur Dioxide which is then processed to produce Sulphuric Acid or H2 SO4. Anhydrite is bured to produce Ammonia or NH3 two very different processes. The Plaster Board Plant at ICI had its own kilns to Produce gypsum for wall boards. The Kilns shown are the newly installed Sulphur burners as I never saw the plant that clean in my time.
Certainly is! Walking outside was like walking through a snow storm there was that much going to atmosphere. The tradesmen never wanted to work inside during summer and nowhere but inside in winter.
Frank Mee and others may put me right, but are these not rotary kilns in which anhydrite was roasted to produce sulphur dioxide? I think the burner used pulverised coal. The wate material was used to prodce plaster board and plaster of Paris.
I can help!
These are the Billingham anhydrite process cement kilns 1 and 2, in a photograph taken in the late 1940s. Using pulverised coal as fuel, they burned a mixture of anhydrite, shale, sand and coke to produce cement clinker, which was transferred to the Casebourne cement works on the Tees bank for grinding into Portland cement. The exhaust gases, which contained about 9% sulfur dioxide, were cleaned and fed into the Contact Process sulfuric acid plant. The co-production of cement and sulfuric acid in this plant began in 1931, and ended in 1970 when the kilns were replaced with sulfur burners.