Water Gas.

Southland Times, Issue 10142, 19 April 1889, Page 3

Water Gas.

Science Gossip. " Electricity versus gas " has been under popular discussion for more than Seven years past. The new illuminator frightened the old gas companies into a panic, which soon passed away. But even if electric lighting had clone nothing else, it forced the gas engineers to give us improved lights and burners, and the gas companies to evolve cheaper -and better gas. When we speak of gas companies, one naturally refers to coal-gas companies. That need not necessarily follow. For many years past chemists have been aware that illuminative gas could be made from other sources than coal. It can be raade_ from Mater. The latter is only a chemical combination o£ oxygen and hydrogen, in the proportion of two parts of the latter to one of the former. Every time a blacksmith plunges a red-hot iron into his cooling trough he decomposes the water immediately in surface contact with the glowing bar. We can see the lambent flame of the hydrogen gas playing about it. Hence many people have long asked whether water gas could not be used. The gas we now burn used to be chemically denominated ' carburetted hydrogen,' that is, hydrogen gas impregnated with carbon. The difficulty was to manufacture water gas at a cheaper rate than coal gas. At last the secret of doing this has been discovered, and, what is more,* it is already successfully applied. The Leeds Forge Company happened to be obliged to carry oi. a ' higher calorific intensity ' than usual. The results of certain experiments (not revealed) induced the managing director to devote his attention to the manufacture of water gas. He began his experimental system in September, 1887, and it proved so satisfactory that at the end of March, _ 1888, he went to the expense of special plant. The latter now produces 40,000 cubic feet of water gas per hour. For nearly a year this large supply has gone on uninterruptedly and successfully. Water gas is now used, not only for lighting purposes but for metal-., lurgical requirements also. The whole of the Leeds Forge Company's works are supplied with it. It is used in the heating furnaces, and in the plate-mill where the steel ingots are rolled into plate 3 for the manufacture of Fox's corrugated boiler flues. It is employed to weld the same tubes, to heat the plates for the flanged frame plates for . railway rolling stock, and other manufacturing purposes where hitherto fuel has been employed. The cost of the production of water gas comes out more than favourably. Its production per ton of fuel is 30,000 cubic feet ; and, with, fuel at 8s per ton (the average North Country price), and labour at 3s (id per. day, water gas oan be manufactured at less than 4d per thousand feet. The manager of the Leeds Forge Company's works states that the saving effected there by the use of the new gas is Ll o,ooo a year. The gas has little or no smoke or .smell, and there is no destruction of pic- * tures, curtains or furniture in the rooms where it is used.