A Practical Treatise on the Manufacture and Distribution of Coal Gas, Its Introduction and Progressive Improvement; Illustrated by Engravings from Working Drawings, with General Estimates (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1841 Excerpt: ...long be generally acknowledged, and their use will consequently be more extensive. At the gas-works in Cambridge, where from the beginning this kind of retort has been adopted in every variety of form, no retort has been changed nor any new one erected for four years. The oldest in that establishment, which have been in operation upwards of seven years, remain perfectly sound, and continue as efficient for making gas as on the first day they were at work. At my request Mr. Grafton has favoured me with the following account of the cause of carbonaceous deposit in retorts: --"After a series of experiments established in 1839 at the Cambridge Gas-works, and after having in vain offered a large premium for the discovery, I was myself enabled to detect the origin of the great accumulation of the carbonaceous deposit in coal-gas retorts, as well as the means of obviating an evil which has been the source of so much loss to the manufacturers of gas. Previously to that period the most eminent scientific authorities consulted on the subject considered this accumulation as the result of high degrees of heat and too great an extent of heated surface. "To ascertain how far this opinion was correct, I commenced my experiments with a number of retorts reduced to various lengths, by the ends being filled up with brickwork, the other dimensions remaining unaltered. "By this difference of length. after repeated trials and at various temperatures, the deposit did not appear to be diminished, although it did not accumulate so rapidly; and finally it formed a coating of the same substance, not less in a short retort than in a long one. "It was observed in all cases that the substance began to form itself first at the closed end of the retort, whence it gradu...