In the past, coal was converted to make coal gas, which was piped to customers to burn for illumination, heating, and cooking. High prices of oil and natural gas led to increased interest in "BTU Conversion" technologies such as
gasification,
methanation and liquefaction. The
Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a U.S. government-funded corporation established in 1980 to create a market for alternatives to imported fossil fuels (such as coal gasification). The corporation was discontinued in 1985.
Early history of coal gas production by carbonization ,
Poland The Flemish scientist
Jan Baptista van Helmont used the name "gas" in his
Origins of Medicine () to describe his discovery of a "wild spirit" which escaped from heated wood and coal, and which "differed little from the
chaos of the ancients". Similar experiments were carried out in 1681 by Johann Becker of
Munich and in 1684 by John Clayton of
Wigan, England. The latter called it "Spirit of the Coal".
William Murdoch (later known as Murdock) discovered new ways of making, purifying and storing gas. Among others, he illuminated his house at
Redruth and his cottage at
Soho, Birmingham in 1792, the entrance to the
Manchester Police Commissioners premises in 1797, the exterior of the factory of
Boulton and Watt in
Birmingham, and a large
cotton mill in
Salford, Lancashire in 1805. Professor
Jan Pieter Minckeleers lit his lecture room at the
University of Louvain in 1783 and
Lord Dundonald lit his house at
Culross, Scotland, in 1787, the gas being carried in sealed vessels from the local tar works. In France,
Philippe le Bon patented a gas fire in 1799 and demonstrated street lighting in 1801. Other demonstrations followed in France and in the United States, but, it is generally recognized that the first commercial gas plant was built by the
London and Westminster Gas Light and Coke Company in Great Peter Street in 1812 laying wooden pipes to illuminate
Westminster Bridge with
gas lights on New Year's Eve in 1813. In 1816,
Rembrandt Peale and four others established the
Gas Light Company of Baltimore, the first manufactured gas company in America. The first German gas plant was built in Hannover in 1825 and by 1870 there were 340 gas plants in Germany making town gas from coal, wood, peat and other materials. Working conditions in the
Gas Light and Coke Company's Horseferry Road Works, London, in the 1830s were described by a French visitor, Flora Tristan, in her
Promenades Dans Londres: Two rows of furnaces on each side were fired up; the effect was not unlike the description of
Vulcan's forge, except that the
Cyclopes were animated with a divine spark, whereas the dusky servants of the English furnaces were joyless, silent and benumbed.... The foreman told me that stokers were selected from among the strongest, but that nevertheless they all became consumptive after seven or eight years of toil and died of pulmonary consumption. That explained the sadness and apathy in the faces and every movement of the hapless men. The first public piped gas supply was to 13
gas lamps, each with three glass globes along the length of
Pall Mall, London in 1807. The credit for this goes to the inventor and entrepreneur
Fredrick Winsor and the plumber
Thomas Sugg, who made and laid the pipes. Digging up streets to lay pipes
required legislation and this delayed the development of street lighting and gas for domestic use. Meanwhile,
William Murdoch and his pupil
Samuel Clegg were installing gas lighting in factories and work places, encountering no such impediments.
Early history of coal gas production by gasification In the 1850s every small to medium-sized town and city had a gas plant to provide for street lighting. Subscribing customers could also have piped lines to their houses. By this era, gas lighting became accepted. Gaslight trickled down to the middle class and later came gas cookers and stoves. The 1860s were the golden age of coal gas development. Scientists like
Kekulé and
Perkin cracked the secrets of organic chemistry to reveal how gas is made and its composition. From this came better gas plants and Perkin's purple dyes, such as
Mauveine. In the 1850s, processes for making
Producer gas and
Water gas from coke were developed. Unenriched water gas may be described as Blue water gas (BWG).
Mond gas, developed in the 1850s by
Ludwig Mond, was producer gas made from coal instead of coke. It contained ammonia and coal tar and was processed to recover these valuable compounds. Blue water gas (BWG) burns with a non-luminous flame which makes it unsuitable for lighting purposes. Carburetted Water Gas (CWG), developed in the 1860s, is BWG enriched with gases obtained by spraying oil into a hot retort. It has a higher
calorific value and burns with a luminous flame. The carburetted water gas process was improved by
Thaddeus S. C. Lowe in 1875. The gas oil was fixed into the BWG via thermocracking in the carburettor and superheater of the CWG generating set. CWG was the dominant technology in the US from the 1880s until the 1950s, replacing coal gasification. CWG has a CV of 20 MJ/m3 i.e. slightly more than half that of natural gas.
Development of the coal gas industry in the UK The advent of
incandescent gas lighting in factories, homes and in the streets, replacing
oil lamps and
candles with steady clear light, almost matching
daylight in its colour, turned night into day for many—making night
shift work possible in industries where light was all important—in
spinning,
weaving and making up garments etc. The social significance of this change is difficult for generations brought up with lighting after dark available at the touch of a switch to appreciate. Not only was industrial production accelerated, but streets were made safe, social intercourse facilitated and reading and writing made more widespread. Gas plants were built in almost every town, main streets were brightly illuminated and gas was piped in the streets to the majority of urban households. The invention of the
gas meter and the pre-payment meter in the late 1880s played an important role in selling town gas to domestic and commercial customers. The education and training of the large workforce, the attempts to standardise manufacturing and commercial practices and the moderating of commercial rivalry between supply companies prompted the founding of associations of gas managers, first in
Scotland in 1861. A British Association of Gas Managers was formed in 1863 in
Manchester and this, after a turbulent history, became the foundation of the Institute of Gas Engineers (IGE). In 1903, the reconstructed
Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) initiated courses for students of gas manufacture in the
City and Guilds of London Institute. The IGE was granted the
Royal Charter in 1929. Universities were slow to respond to the needs of the industry and it was not until 1908 that the first Professorship of Coal Gas and Fuel Industries was founded at the
University of Leeds. In 1926, the
Gas Light and Coke Company opened Watson House adjacent to
Nine Elms Gas plants. At first, this was a
scientific laboratory. Later it included a centre for training
apprentices but its major contribution to the industry was its gas appliance testing facilities, which were made available to the whole industry, including gas appliance manufacturers. Using this facility, the industry established not only safety but also performance standards for both the manufacture of gas appliances and their servicing in customers' homes and commercial premises. During
World War I, the gas industry's by-products,
phenol,
toluene and
ammonia and sulphurous compounds were valuable ingredients for
explosives. Much
coal for the gas plants was shipped by sea and was vulnerable to enemy attack. The gas industry was a large employer of clerks, mainly male before the war. But the advent of the
typewriter and the female
typist made another important social change that was, unlike the employment of women in war-time industry, to have long-lasting effects. The inter-war years were marked by the development of the continuous vertical retort which replaced many of the batch fed horizontal retorts. There were improvements in storage, especially the waterless
gas holder, and distribution with the advent of 2–4inch steel pipes to convey gas at up to as feeder mains compared to the traditional
cast iron pipes working at an average of 2–3inches
water gauge (500–750
Pa).
Benzole as a vehicle fuel and
coal tar as the main feedstock for the emerging organic chemical industry provided the gas industry with substantial revenues.
Petroleum supplanted coal tar as the primary feedstock of the organic chemical industry after
World War II and the loss of this market contributed to the economic problems of the gas industry after the war. A wide variety of appliances and uses for gas developed over the years.
Gas fires,
gas cookers,
refrigerators,
washing machines,
hand irons,
pokers for lighting coal fires, gas-heated baths, remotely controlled clusters of
gas lights,
gas engines of various types and, in later years, gas warm air and hot water
central heating and
air conditioning, all of which made immense contributions to the improvement of the quality of life in cities and towns worldwide. The evolution of
electric lighting made available from public supply extinguished the gas light, except where colour matching was practised as in
haberdashery shops. ==Process==