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A profile of the gas manufacturing process, it's design, development, application and the types of waste and by-products which may be associated with the processes used.. The author is grateful to fellow members of Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers (IGEM) Panel for the History of the Industry and the staff of the National Gas Archive for th...
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Context 1
... War 1 had a major effect on all aspects of British life, and the gas industry was equally affected. The war had diverted funds away from the gas industry whilst, driving up the prices of raw materials, enforcing price controls and requiring it to produce chemicals for the war effort for fuels, textiles and munitions manufacture. The war also took skilled staff and diverted engineering materials away from the gas industry, leading the industry in stagnation and decline. During this time many small gas companies struggled, some went bankrupt and others had to amalgamate to survive, this lead to many of the smaller works closing and being supplied from a large more economic gasworks. The Gas Regulation Act was introduced in 1920, it changed the basis of charging for gas. It also introduced a national basis for the testing and reporting of gas quality. Gas quality had from the th middle of the 19 century been based on its illuminating power, the act changed the basis to the calorific value of the gas. With the invention of the gas mantle and the move away from lighting markets the illuminating power of gas was now largely irrelevant. A development in the 1930's was the increasing number formation of holding companies such as the Devon Gas Association and the Severn Valley Gas Corporation. These Holding companies bought up control of predominantly small gas undertakings. They allowed the undertakings to trade as the original company, but provided central control and assistance in financial, managerial and technical capacity. Many of these small undertakings would have collapsed without the holdings company’s intervention. In 1932 Eric Fraser created “Mr Therm” as an advertising symbol for the Gas Light & Coke Company, he was later adopted by the British Commercial Gas association on behalf of the wider British Gas Industry. As the end of the 1930’s loomed so again did the prospect of another world war. The Second World War took a greater toll on the gas infrastructure than had occurred during the First World War. The industry had seen gas demand increase as it was essential to the war effort, with its by- products ranging from explosives to motor fuel also essential. The gas industry was instrumental in producing hydrogen gas for the barrage balloons, they formed an important part of the British air defences. The aerial bombing of gasworks and gas mains was hugely damaging and again skilled staff was lost from the industry to the war effort and funds for new plant were hard to obtain. The damage incurred by the Gas Industry would require major investment to reconstruct it. In 1944 the minister of fuel and power appointed Geoffrey Heyworth to be the chairman a review the gas industry, to look at how the industry could develop and cheapen gas supplies to all types of consumers. The Heyworth review highlighted many issues such as the need for improvement of the gas transmission network achieved through some form of amalgamation to larger companies. The incoming Labour Government decided that the best course of action for the gas industry was nationalisation on the basis of the Heyworth Report. Nationalisation occurred through The Gas Act of 1948. The 1,064 local gas undertakings were vested in twelve Area Gas Boards. Each of the gas boards were an autonomous body with its own chairman and board structure.. To ensure communication between the area gas boards and the Ministry of Fuel and Power, the Gas Council was established. Each area board divided its region into geographical groups or divisions With ever increasing coal cost the gas industry started to look for alternative gas feedstock’s or gas supplies. One such alternative supply was mines gas which was rich in methane, the Point of Ayr Colliery in North Wales, proved to be a valuable source of this gas. The 95% pure methane gas could not be used directly, but was reformed first, this process basically split with the help of steam the methane into a “town gas” of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. It produced a lean gas which was then enriched with methane to the required British thermal unit standard. Although a useful source mines gas could only supply a small portion of that required by Britain. The Gas Council had joined forces with the German Lurgi company to develop new approaches to gasifying lower grade coal, this is discussed later in this document. Early on-shore exploration for gas in Britain had found small gas fields in Heathfield (Sussex), Whitby (Yorkshire) and Cousland (Scotland) but nothing significant on a national scale. As an alternative to coal the gas industry started to use oil more as a feedstock for gas manufacture, which led to the construction of oil gas plants such as SEGAS plants (Figure 17). Later on as by-products of the petroleum industry became available at economic prices. new reforming plants were built across Britain which used butane, naphtha and Primary Flash Distillate (PFD) as ...
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A profile of the gas manufacturing process, its design, development, application and the types of waste and by-products which may be associated with the processes used.. The author is grateful to fellow members of the Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers Panel for the History of the Industry and the staff of the National Grid Gas Archive for t...
A commonly held view is that system and human vulnerabilities can form links in a chain of events and result in an undesirable outcome. However, this truism has led to only limited success in the development of better techniques to analyze this progression. In this study the evolution of air traffic operational errors (OEs) was of particular intere...
Citations
... MGPs synthesised hydrogen and methane rich gas via the process of pyrolysis of coal or oil. MGPs produced a wide variety of wastes and by-products including scurf, ash, coal tar, coal, benzol, ammoniacal liquor, spent oxide, and foul lime (Thomas, 2014;Ruby et al., 2016). To improve the manufacturing efficiency, several MGP processes were developed. ...
... To improve the manufacturing efficiency, several MGP processes were developed. These include low temperature horizontal retorts (LTHR), high temperature horizontal retorts (HTHR), continuous vertical retorts (CVR), intermittent vertical coke ovens (IVCOs), coke ovens (COs), carburetted water gas (CWG), Tully plants (TP), heavy oil reforming plants (HORP), catalytic oil gas plants (COGP), and processes implemented to convert by-products to profitable goods such as tar distillation plants (TDP) and chemical plants (CP) (Gallacher et al., 2017b;Thomas, 2014). ...
... The accuracy of HHRAs might be improved if the MGP process PAH distributions were known and targeted in assessments. Gallacher et al. (2017b), Thomas (2014) and McGregor et al. (2012) provide detailed descriptions of these MGP processes, such as the retort/chamber structures and pyrolysis temperatures used. They classified MGP processes by PAHs from end-member coal tars using two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC × GC) (McGregor et al., 2012;Gallacher et al., 2017b). ...
... A diorama of William Murdoch demonstrating gas lighting at his home in Redruth, Cornwall c179420 ...
This paper investigates the technological challenges and solutions to defining a reproducible standard for light together with its measurement, from the 18th to 21st century. The arrival and subsequent need to quantify gas lighting led to development of improved measurement methods, which in turn demanded more reliable standards of light, evolving from candle and flame standards to incandescence, and eventually the current radiometric definition. The progression is similarly traced from the plethora of early comparative visual photometry methods through to modern semiconductor instrumentation. The problem of heterochromatic photometry is also examined.
... This noxious gas was later piped into homes and even used as a controllable fuel source for cooking. Most towns and cities in industrialised countries, by the end of the nineteenth century, had gasworks that produced 'town gas' and coke (Thomas, 2014). ...
... The ammonia was sold as fertiliser, coal tar was distilled into a range of oils: light (boiling point (bp) <200°C), middle (bp 200-240°C), heavy (bp 240-270°C) or anthracene (bp 270-360°C), and the residual thick tar and pitch was even used for making roads. Other ways to make gas from coal were also employed at this time, one of which was by spraying water on red-hot coke making what was known as 'water gas' (Everett et al., 2012;Shadle et al., 2000;Thomas, 2014). ...
Coal presents a particular set of challenges when balancing energy policy goals. Despite presenting viable solutions to the problems of energy security and global energy poverty, coal struggles, given its greenhouse-gas drawbacks, in a world of increasingly harmful climate change. Notwithstanding the harm caused to the environment, coal remains an expanding low-price route to meeting local energy needs. It is forecasted to remain a major global resource for the foreseeable future. In the short term it is predicted to have a 26% share of the global energy mix. Recent years have witnessed severe deviations from previously stable trends in coal markets and policy dynamics. According to the predictions by the International Energy Agency, a variety of factors ranging from the planned phase-out of coal in countries such as Denmark, France and the UK, to changes in policy in China and import-dependency in India, and demand drop in the US have together resulted in the largest decline in coal production since 1971 in 2015. This paper seeks to outline basic coal facts, recent market trends and directions globally and provides an overview of issues shaping the future of coal in the twenty-first century.
... Data A). This was probably caused by the gas manufacturing procedures used many decades ago, which employed the use of alkaline solutions and foul lime, a rock solid of high pH (Thomas and Brinckerhoff, 2014). The effect of pH as a critical influencer of microbial community structures is well-established (Cho et al., 2016;Fierer and Jackson, 2006;Hartman et al., 2008;Lauber et al., 2009). ...
... Data A). The presence of bacteria associated with sulfur and nitrogen metabolism at the site could further be linked to the common use of sulfates and ammonia at gasworks sites (Thomas and Brinckerhoff, 2014). Overall, the occurrence of various putative hydrocarbon-degraders, sulfate-reducers/oxidizers and methanogens at the different sampling stations indicated that bacterial communities were well-adjusted to environmental conditions across the site, and that the occurrence of dynamic groundwater flows and/or previous natural attenuation processes could be occurring over the decades. ...
This work aimed at the comprehensive analysis of total microbial communities inhabiting a typical hydrocarbon-polluted site, where chemical characteristics of the groundwater were readily available. To achieve this, a joint metagenomic characterization of bacteria and viruses surrounding a contaminant plume was performed over a one-year period. The results presented demonstrated that both potential hydrocarbon degraders and their bacteriophages were dominant around the plume, and that the viral and bacterial diversities found at the site were probably influenced by the pH of the groundwater. Niche-specific and dispersed associations between phages and bacteria were identified. The niche phage-host associations were found at the edge of the site and at the core of the plume where pH was the highest (9.52). The identified host populations included several classes of bacteria (e.g. Clostridia and Proteobacteria). Thirty-six viral generalists were also discovered, with BGW-G9 having the broadest host range across 23 taxa, including Pseudomonas, Polycyclovorans, Methylocaldum and Candidatus Magnetobacterium species. The phages with broad host ranges are presumed to have significant effects on prokaryotic production and horizontal gene transfer, and therefore impact the biodegradation processes conducted by various bacteria of the environment studied. This study for the first time characterized the phages and their bacterial hosts associated with a contaminant plume.
The first part of the introduction aims at explaining the relevance of the gas industry in the history of the industrial revolution. Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 has awoken popular awareness on the World’s dependence on Russia’s gas supply. Therefore, it is required that experts in economic, industrial, and business history go back to identifying the moment when gas became a crucial energy source for Europe’s industrial take off, at the turn of the eighteenth century. Not only was gas relevant as an energy source to put the factories into motion, but it also made possible the take-off of other industrial sectors that depended on such energy source, for example, transportation and communications.
Industrial associationism became an urgent need in Latin Europe’s gas sector by the mid-1870s, when they founded the Société Technique de l’Industrie du Gaz (1874) in France. The aim of such associations was to join the efforts of engineers, technicians, and investors not only from the country where they created them, but also from all over the continent. Thus, their members would enjoy a proper atmosphere to share knowledge, explore the chances of capital investments, and establish national and international networks to promote the expansion of the gas sector along the region. Nevertheless, there is a precedent for the Société Technique that has been barely studied up to the present moment: the Société Française de l’Industrie du Gaz, constituted in 1870. The Société Française talks about a pro-association spirit in the sector that might go back to the previous decade. In this chapter we explore the context in which it was created, paying attention to the names, as well as the academic, economic, and national affiliation of its members. Doing so, we will determine the role that it played to trigger the birth of new associations in Latin Europe’s gas industry.
El inglés Aaron Manby (1776-1850) es el iniciador de una saga, continuada por sus hijos, también ingenieros: Charles (1804-1884), John Richard (1813-1869), Joseph (1814-1862), y Edward (1816-1864). Todos ellos desempeñaron un papel muy relevante en la Europa del ochocientos, combinando su profesión como ingenieros con una intensa actividad industrial, que desarrollaron en Gran Bretaña, Francia y España. Aaron, el patriarca, fue el primero en construir un barco de hierro, que comunicó Gran Bretaña y Francia. En Francia levantó una gran industria metalúrgica a principios de la década de 1820, dedicándose a la construcción de este tipo de buques, y entre otros menesteres también abarcó la fabricación de equipamiento para el negocio gasista; de hecho, obtuvo la concesión para el alumbrado de París. A mediados de los años 1840 sus hijos Joseph y Edward marcharon a España, donde destacaron con un trabajo frenético en la industria del gas, así como en la desecación de lagunas, la construcción de ferrocarril, o la explotación minera. En este estudio se analiza el conjunto de sus actividades, subrayando su participación en el nacimiento de la industria española del gas, sin descuidar el resto de ámbitos en los que diversificaron sus inversiones.
Rationale
Coal tars are a mixture of organic and inorganic compounds that were by‐products from the manufactured gas and coke making industries. The tar compositions varied depending on many factors such as the temperature of production and the type of retort used. For this reason a comprehensive database of the compounds found in different tar types is of value to understand both how their compositions differ and what potential chemical hazards are present. This study focuses on the heterocyclic and hydroxylated compounds present in a database produced from 16 different tars from five different production processes.
Methods
Samples of coal tar were extracted using accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) and derivatized post‐extraction using N,O‐bis(trimethylsilyl)trifluoroacetamide (BSTFA) with 1% trimethylchlorosilane (TMCS). The derivatized samples were analysed using two‐dimensional gas chromatography combined with time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (GCxGC/TOFMS).
Results
A total of 865 heterocyclic compounds and 359 hydroxylated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were detected in 16 tar samples produced by five different processes. The contents of both heterocyclic and hydroxylated PAHs varied greatly with the production process used, with the heterocyclic compounds giving information about the feedstock used. Of the 359 hydroxylated PAHs detected the majority would not have been be detected without the use of derivatization.
Conclusions
Coal tars produced using different production processes and feedstocks yielded tars with significantly different heterocyclic and hydroxylated contents. The concentrations of the individual heterocyclic compounds varied greatly even within the different production processes and provided information about the feedstock used to produce the tars. The hydroxylated PAH content of the samples provided important analytical information that would otherwise not have been obtained without the use of derivatization and GCxGC/TOFMS.
Rationale:
Coal tars are a mixture of organic and inorganic compounds and were by-products from the manufactured gas and coke making industries. Different manufacturing processes have resulted in the production of distinctly different tar compositions. This study presents a comprehensive database of compounds produced using two-dimensional gas chromatography combined with time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GCxGC/TOFMS), analysing 16 tar samples produced by 5 distinct production processes.
Methods:
Samples of coal tar were extracted using accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) and derivatized post extraction using N,O-Bis(trimethylsilyl)trifluoroacetamide (BSTFA) with 1% trimethylchlorosilane (TMCS). The derivatized samples were analysed using two-dimensional gas chromatography combined with time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GCxGC/TOFMS).
Results:
A total of 16 tar samples originating from 5 different production processes: Low Temperature Horizontal Retorts, Horizontal Retorts, Vertical Retorts, Carbureted Water Gas and Coke Ovens, were analysed. 2369 unique compounds were detected with 948 aromatic compounds, 196 aliphatic compounds, 380 sulphur-containing compounds, 209 oxygen-containing compounds, 262 nitrogen-containing compounds and 15 mixed heterocycles. Derivatization allowed the detection of 359 unique compounds, the majority in the form of hydroxylated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, many of which would not have been detected without derivatization. Of the 2369 unique compounds detected 173 compounds were found to be present within all samples.
Conclusions:
A unique comprehensive database of compounds detected within 16 tar samples from 5 different production processes was produced. The 173 compounds identified within every sample may be of particular importance from a regulatory standpoint. This initial study indicates that different production processes produce tars with different chemical signatures and it can be further expanded upon by in-depth analysis of the different compound types. The number of compounds presented within this database clearly demonstrates the analytical power of GCxGC/TOFMS.
