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100-418: Coal gas is a flammable gaseous fuel made from coal and supplied to the user via a piped distribution system. It is produced when coal is heated strongly in the absence of air. Town gas is a more general term referring to manufactured gaseous fuels produced for sale to consumers and municipalities. The original coal gas was produced by the coal gasification reaction, and the burnable component consisted of

200-408: A steam engine replaced a horse-powered pump in 1742. Such engines were used to pump water to a reservoir above the furnace. The first engines used to blow cylinders directly was supplied by Boulton and Watt to John Wilkinson 's New Willey Furnace. This powered a cast iron blowing cylinder , which had been invented by his father Isaac Wilkinson . He patented such cylinders in 1736, to replace

300-542: A blast furnace to melt the iron and remove the gangue (impurities) unless the ore is very high quality. The oxygen blast furnace (OBF) process has been extensively studied theoretically because of the potentials of promising energy conservation and CO 2 emission reduction. This type may be the most suitable for use with CCS. The main blast furnace has of three levels; the reduction zone (523–973 K (250–700 °C; 482–1,292 °F)), slag formation zone (1,073–1,273 K (800–1,000 °C; 1,472–1,832 °F)), and

400-413: A bloomery does not. Another difference is that bloomeries operate as a batch process whereas blast furnaces operate continuously for long periods. Continuous operation is also preferred because blast furnaces are difficult to start and stop. Also, the carbon in pig iron lowers the melting point below that of steel or pure iron; in contrast, iron does not melt in a bloomery. Silica has to be removed from

500-437: A feedstock for chemical processes. Fuel gas in the commercial sector is used for heating, cooking, baking and drying, and in the domestic sector for heating and cooking. Currently, fuel gases, especially syngas, are used heavily for the production of ammonia for fertilizers and for the preparation of many detergents and specialty chemicals. On an industrial plant fuel gas may be used to purge pipework and vessels to prevent

600-404: A feedstock to chemical reactions that produce gas. The first process used was the carbonization and partial pyrolysis of coal . The off gases liberated in the high-temperature carbonization ( coking ) of coal in coke ovens were collected, scrubbed and used as fuel. Depending on the goal of the plant, the desired product was either a high quality coke for metallurgical use, with the gas being

700-472: A minor branch of the industry, but Darby's son built a new furnace at nearby Horsehay, and began to supply the owners of finery forges with coke pig iron for the production of bar iron. Coke pig iron was by this time cheaper to produce than charcoal pig iron. The use of a coal-derived fuel in the iron industry was a key factor in the British Industrial Revolution . However, in many areas of

800-492: A mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen in roughly equal quantities by volume. Thus, coal gas is highly toxic . Other compositions contain additional calorific gases such as methane , produced by the Fischer–Tropsch process , and volatile hydrocarbons together with small quantities of non-calorific gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen . Prior to the development of natural gas supply and transmission—during

900-450: A model factory, often as large as the church and only several feet away, and waterpower drove the machinery of the various industries located on its floor." Iron ore deposits were often donated to the monks along with forges to extract the iron, and after a time surpluses were offered for sale. The Cistercians became the leading iron producers in Champagne , France, from the mid-13th century to

1000-405: A producer (generator), carburettor and a super heater connected in series with gas pipes and valves. During a make run, steam would be passed through the generator to make blue water gas. From the generator the hot water gas would pass into the top of the carburettor where light petroleum oils would be injected into the gas stream. The light oils would be thermocracked as they came in contact with

1100-400: A side product, or the production of a high quality gas, with coke being the side product. Coke plants are typically associated with metallurgical facilities such as smelters or blast furnaces , while gas works typically served urban areas. A facility used to manufacture coal gas, carburetted water gas (CWG), and oil gas is today generally referred to as a manufactured gas plant (MGP). In

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1200-543: A tar, ammonia and hydrogen sulfide . These must be removed and a substantial amount of plant may be required to do this. In the 20th century, natural gas , composed primarily of methane , became the dominant source of fuel gas, as instead of having to be manufactured in various processes, it could be extracted from deposits in the earth. Natural gas may be combined with hydrogen to form a mixture known as HCNG . Additional fuel gases obtained from natural gas or petroleum : The composition of natural gas varies widely, but

1300-400: A wide variety of feedstocks in some mixture of air, oxygen, or steam, to reduce the latter to hydrogen and carbon monoxide although some destructive distillation may also occur. Manufactured gas can be made by two processes: carbonization or gasification . Carbonization refers to the devolatilization of an organic feedstock to yield gas and char . Gasification is the process of subjecting

1400-531: Is believed to have produced cast iron quite efficiently. Its date is not yet clear, but it probably did not survive until Henry VIII 's Dissolution of the Monasteries in the late 1530s, as an agreement (immediately after that) concerning the "smythes" with the Earl of Rutland in 1541 refers to blooms. Nevertheless, the means by which the blast furnace spread in medieval Europe has not finally been determined. Due to

1500-623: Is for the British National Transmission System. Incomplete Combustion Factor (ICF) – an empirical index that relates the composition of a gas to its tendency to burn incompletely in a gas appliance. Dutton defined the ICF as: ICF = 0.64 × (W − 50.73 + 0.03 × PN) where W is the Wobbe index, MJ/m ; PN is the volumetric percentage of C 3 H 8 plus N 2 in a three-component mixture. Soot Index (SI) – an empirical index that relates

1600-544: Is located in Fengxiang County , Shaanxi (a museum exists on the site today). There is however no evidence of the bloomery in China after the appearance of the blast furnace and cast iron. In China, blast furnaces produced cast iron, which was then either converted into finished implements in a cupola furnace, or turned into wrought iron in a fining hearth. Although cast iron farm tools and weapons were widespread in China by

1700-448: Is now a restored gasworks museum). The Portadown site has been cleared and is now the subject of a long-term experiment into the use of bacteria for the purpose of cleaning up contaminated industrial land. As well as requiring little processing before use, natural gas is non-toxic; the carbon monoxide (CO) in town gas made it extremely poisonous, accidental poisoning and suicide by gas being commonplace. Poisoning from natural gas appliances

1800-505: Is only due to incomplete combustion, which creates CO, and flue leaks to living accommodation. As with town gas, a small amount of foul-smelling substance ( mercaptan ) is added to the gas to indicate to the user that there is a leak or an unlit burner, the gas having no odour of its own. The organisation of the British gas industry adapted to these changes, first, by the Gas Act 1965 by empowering

1900-458: Is possible that the technology reached Sweden by this means. The Vikings are known to have used double bellows, which greatly increases the volumetric flow of the blast. The Caspian region may also have been the source for the design of the furnace at Ferriere , described by Filarete , involving a water-powered bellows at Semogo in Valdidentro in northern Italy in 1226. In a two-stage process

2000-501: Is shown in the graph below. Until 1968 this was from supplies of LNG from Algeria, until North Sea gas was available from 1968. Natural gas available, millions of therms The exploitation of the North Sea gas reserves , entailing landing gas at Easington , Bacton and St Fergus made viable the building of a national distribution grid, of over 3,000 miles (4,800 km), consisting of two parallel and interconnected pipelines running

2100-408: Is used to make cast iron . The majority of pig iron produced by blast furnaces undergoes further processing to reduce the carbon and sulphur content and produce various grades of steel used for construction materials, automobiles, ships and machinery. Desulphurisation usually takes place during the transport of the liquid steel to the steelworks. This is done by adding calcium oxide , which reacts with

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2200-757: The Chinese examples, were very inefficient compared to those used today. The iron from the Lapphyttan complex was used to produce balls of wrought iron known as osmonds , and these were traded internationally – a possible reference occurs in a treaty with Novgorod from 1203 and several certain references in accounts of English customs from the 1250s and 1320s. Other furnaces of the 13th to 15th centuries have been identified in Westphalia . The technology required for blast furnaces may have either been transferred from China, or may have been an indigenous innovation. Al-Qazvini in

2300-526: The Industrial Revolution . Hot blast was patented by James Beaumont Neilson at Wilsontown Ironworks in Scotland in 1828. Within a few years of the introduction, hot blast was developed to the point where fuel consumption was cut by one-third using coke or two-thirds using coal, while furnace capacity was also significantly increased. Within a few decades, the practice was to have a "stove" as large as

2400-529: The Ironbridge Gorge Museums. Cast iron from the furnace was used to make girders for the world's first cast iron bridge in 1779. The Iron Bridge crosses the River Severn at Coalbrookdale and remains in use for pedestrians. The steam engine was applied to power blast air, overcoming a shortage of water power in areas where coal and iron ore were located. This was first done at Coalbrookdale where

2500-481: The Lehigh Crane Iron Company at Catasauqua, Pennsylvania , in 1839. Anthracite use declined when very high capacity blast furnaces requiring coke were built in the 1870s. The blast furnace remains an important part of modern iron production. Modern furnaces are highly efficient, including Cowper stoves to pre-heat the blast air and employ recovery systems to extract the heat from the hot gases exiting

2600-517: The Lurgi Process , catalytic reforming , the catalytic rich gas process, steam reforming of rich gas, and the gas recycle hydrogenator process. The catalytic rich gas process used natural gas as a feedstock to manufacture town gas. These facilities utilised the chemical reaction processes described above. The rise of oil as a feedstock to manufacture town gas is shown on the graph below. The peak usage in 1968/9 and subsequent decline coincides with

2700-673: The convection of hot gases in a chimney flue . According to this broad definition, bloomeries for iron, blowing houses for tin , and smelt mills for lead would be classified as blast furnaces. However, the term has usually been limited to those used for smelting iron ore to produce pig iron , an intermediate material used in the production of commercial iron and steel , and the shaft furnaces used in combination with sinter plants in base metals smelting. Blast furnaces are estimated to have been responsible for over 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions between 1900 and 2015, but are difficult to decarbonize. Blast furnaces operate on

2800-855: The fuel efficiency of the bloomery and improves yield. They can also be built bigger than natural draught bloomeries. The oldest known blast furnaces in the West were built in Durstel in Switzerland , the Märkische Sauerland in Germany , and at Lapphyttan in Sweden , where the complex was active between 1205 and 1300. At Noraskog in the Swedish parish of Järnboås, traces of even earlier blast furnaces have been found, possibly from around 1100. These early blast furnaces, like

2900-459: The iron sulfide contained in the pig iron to form calcium sulfide (called lime desulfurization ). In a further process step, the so-called basic oxygen steelmaking , the carbon is oxidized by blowing oxygen onto the liquid pig iron to form crude steel . Cast iron has been found in China dating to the 5th century BC, but the earliest extant blast furnaces in China date to the 1st century AD and in

3000-564: The 'dwarf" blast furnaces were found in Dabieshan . In construction, they are both around the same level of technological sophistication. The effectiveness of the Chinese human and horse powered blast furnaces was enhanced during this period by the engineer Du Shi (c. AD 31), who applied the power of waterwheels to piston - bellows in forging cast iron. Early water-driven reciprocators for operating blast furnaces were built according to

3100-636: The 13th century and other travellers subsequently noted an iron industry in the Alburz Mountains to the south of the Caspian Sea . This is close to the silk route , so that the use of technology derived from China is conceivable. Much later descriptions record blast furnaces about three metres high. As the Varangian Rus' people from Scandinavia traded with the Caspian (using their Volga trade route ), it

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3200-411: The 1550s, and many were built in the remainder of that century and the following ones. The output of the industry probably peaked about 1620, and was followed by a slow decline until the early 18th century. This was apparently because it was more economic to import iron from Sweden and elsewhere than to make it in some more remote British locations. Charcoal that was economically available to the industry

3300-495: The 17th century, also using the phosphate -rich slag from their furnaces as an agricultural fertilizer . Archaeologists are still discovering the extent of Cistercian technology. At Laskill , an outstation of Rievaulx Abbey and the only medieval blast furnace so far identified in Britain , the slag produced was low in iron content. Slag from other furnaces of the time contained a substantial concentration of iron, whereas Laskill

3400-399: The 1850s by Sir William Siemens . The incandescent fuel bed would be alternately blasted with air followed by steam. The air reactions during the blow cycle are exothermic, heating up the bed, while the steam reactions during the make cycle, are endothermic and cool down the bed. The products from the air cycle contain non-calorific nitrogen and are exhausted out the stack while the products of

3500-431: The 1860s. Gas oil (an early form of gasoline) was the flammable waste product from kerosene refining, made from the lightest and most volatile fractions (tops) of crude oil. In 1875 Thaddeus S. C. Lowe invented the carburetted water gas process. This process revolutionized the manufactured gas industry and was the standard technology until the end of manufactured gas era. A CWG generating set consisted of three elements;

3600-552: The 1940s and 1950s in the United States and during the late 1960s and 1970s in the United Kingdom and Australia—almost all gas for fuel and lighting was manufactured from coal. Town gas was supplied to households via municipally owned piped distribution systems. Sometimes, this was called syn gas , in contrast to natural gas. At the time, a frequent method of committing suicide was the inhalation of gas from an unlit oven. With

3700-479: The 4th century AD. The primary advantage of the early blast furnace was in large scale production and making iron implements more readily available to peasants. Cast iron is more brittle than wrought iron or steel, which required additional fining and then cementation or co-fusion to produce, but for menial activities such as farming it sufficed. By using the blast furnace, it was possible to produce larger quantities of tools such as ploughshares more efficiently than

3800-508: The 5th century BC , employing workforces of over 200 men in iron smelters from the 3rd century onward, the earliest blast furnaces constructed were attributed to the Han dynasty in the 1st century AD. These early furnaces had clay walls and used phosphorus -containing minerals as a flux . Chinese blast furnaces ranged from around two to ten meters in height, depending on the region. The largest ones were found in modern Sichuan and Guangdong , while

3900-512: The Corsican, was used prior to the advent of Christianity . Examples of improved bloomeries are the Stuckofen, sometimes called wolf-furnace, which remained until the beginning of the 19th century. Instead of using natural draught, air was pumped in by a trompe , resulting in better quality iron and an increased capacity. This pumping of air in with bellows is known as cold blast , and it increases

4000-619: The Gas Council to acquire and supply gas to the twelve area gas boards . Then, the Gas Act 1972 formed the British Gas Corporation as a single commercial entity, embracing all the twelve area gas boards, allowing them to acquire, distribute and market gas and gas appliances to industrial commercial and domestic customers throughout the UK. In 1986, British Gas was privatised and the government no longer has any direct control over it. During

4100-482: The LNG plant on Canvey. The Fuel Policy White Paper of 1967 (Cmd. 3438) pointed the industry in the direction of building up the use of natural gas speedily to 'enable the country to benefit as soon as possible from the advantages of this new indigenous energy source'. As a result, there was a 'rush to gas' for use in peak load electricity generation and in low grade uses in industry. The growth in availability of natural gas

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4200-475: The Second World War as petroleum shortages forced Nazi Germany to develop the Fischer–Tropsch synthesis to produce synthetic fuel for aircraft and tanks. The by-products of coal gas manufacture included coke , coal tar , sulfur and ammonia and these were all useful products. Dyes, medicines such as sulfa drugs , saccharine , and dozens of organic compounds are made from coal tar. The coal used, and

4300-520: The West from the High Middle Ages . They spread from the region around Namur in Wallonia (Belgium) in the late 15th century, being introduced to England in 1491. The fuel used in these was invariably charcoal. The successful substitution of coke for charcoal is widely attributed to English inventor Abraham Darby in 1709. The efficiency of the process was further enhanced by the practice of preheating

4400-589: The area with higher temperatures, ranging up to 1200 °C degrees, it is reduced further to iron metal: The carbon dioxide formed in this process is re-reduced to carbon monoxide by the coke : The temperature-dependent equilibrium controlling the gas atmosphere in the furnace is called the Boudouard reaction : The pig iron produced by the blast furnace has a relatively high carbon content of around 4–5% and usually contains too much sulphur, making it very brittle, and of limited immediate commercial use. Some pig iron

4500-408: The availability of North Sea gas which, over the next few years, displaced town gas as a primary fuel and led to the decline of oil as a feedstock for gas making, as shown. Oil-based town gas production, millions of therms By the 1960s, manufactured gas, compared with its main rival in the energy market, electricity, was considered "nasty, smelly, dirty and dangerous" (to quote market research of

4600-432: The blast furnace, such as the Swedish electric blast furnace, have been developed in countries which have no native coal resources. According to Global Energy Monitor , the blast furnace is likely to become obsolete to meet climate change objectives of reducing carbon dioxide emission, but BHP disagrees. An alternative process involving direct reduced iron (DRI) is likely to succeed it, but this also needs to use

4700-475: The bloomery. In areas where quality was important, such as warfare, wrought iron and steel were preferred. Nearly all Han period weapons are made of wrought iron or steel, with the exception of axe-heads, of which many are made of cast iron. Blast furnaces were also later used to produce gunpowder weapons such as cast iron bomb shells and cast iron cannons during the Song dynasty . The simplest forge , known as

4800-615: The coal gas, but would leave behind a crumbly, low-quality coke not suitable for metallurgical processes. Coal or coke oven gas typically had a calorific value between 10 and 20 megajoules per cubic metre (270 and 540 Btu/cu ft); with values around 20 MJ/m (540 Btu/cu ft) being typical. The advent of electric lighting forced utilities to search for other markets for manufactured gas. MGPs that once almost exclusively produced lighting gas shifted their efforts towards supplying gas for heating and cooking, and even refrigeration and cooling. Fuel gas for industrial use

4900-434: The combustion air ( hot blast ), patented by Scottish inventor James Beaumont Neilson in 1828. Archaeological evidence shows that bloomeries appeared in China around 800 BC. Originally it was thought that the Chinese started casting iron right from the beginning, but this theory has since been debunked by the discovery of 'more than ten' iron digging implements found in the tomb of Duke Jing of Qin (d. 537 BC), whose tomb

5000-402: The combustion air being supplied above atmospheric pressure . In a blast furnace, fuel ( coke ), ores , and flux ( limestone ) are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while a hot blast of air (sometimes with oxygen enrichment) is blown into the lower section of the furnace through a series of pipes called tuyeres , so that the chemical reactions take place throughout

5100-424: The combustion zone (1,773–1,873 K (1,500–1,600 °C; 2,732–2,912 °F)). Blast furnaces are currently rarely used in copper smelting, but modern lead smelting blast furnaces are much shorter than iron blast furnaces and are rectangular in shape. Modern lead blast furnaces are constructed using water-cooled steel or copper jackets for the walls, and have no refractory linings in the side walls. The base of

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5200-405: The composition of a gas to its tendency to produce soot during combustion in a gas appliance. The calorific value of manufactured gas is around 500 Btu per cubic foot (18,629 kJ/m ). Whereas, the calorific value of natural gas is twice that at around 1000 Btu per cubic foot (37,259 kJ/m ). For a given amount of heat only half the volume of natural gas is required.   One of the earliest uses

5300-428: The difficulty of transporting solid fuel and the dangers of spillage inherent in liquid fuels, it also has limitations. It is possible for a fuel gas to be undetected and cause a gas explosion . For this reason, odorizers are added to most fuel gases. The most common type of fuel gas in current use is natural gas . There are two broad classes of fuel gases, based not on their chemical composition, but their source and

5400-457: The drilling rig Sea Gem , on 17 September 1965, some forty miles off Grimsby , over 8,000 feet (2,400 m) below the seabed. Subsequently, the North Sea was found to have many substantial gas fields on both sides of the median line defining which nations should have rights over the reserves. In a pilot scheme customers on Canvey Island were converted from town gas to natural gas supplied from

5500-468: The dye and chemical industry with a wide range of artificial dyes being made from coal gas and coal tar. Facilities where the gas was produced were often known as a manufactured gas plant (MGP) or a gasworks . In the United Kingdom the discovery of large reserves of natural gas, or sea gas as it was known colloquially, in the Southern North Sea off the coasts of Norfolk and Yorkshire in 1965 led to

5600-459: The early years of MGP operations, the goal of a utility gas works was to produce the greatest amount of illuminating gas. The illuminating power of a gas was related to amount of soot -forming hydrocarbons ("illuminants") dissolved in it. These hydrocarbons gave the gas flame its characteristic bright yellow color. Gas works would typically use oily bituminous coals as feedstock. These coals would give off large amounts of volatile hydrocarbons into

5700-474: The era of North Sea gas , many of the original cast iron gas pipes installed in towns and cities for town gas were replaced by plastic . As reported in the DTI Energy Review 'Our Energy Challenge' January 2006 North Sea gas resources have been depleted at a faster rate than had been anticipated and gas supplies for the UK are being sought from remote sources, a strategy made possible by developments in

5800-659: The expensive conversion or replacement of most of Britain's gas cookers and gas heaters, from the late 1960s onwards, the process being completed by the late 1970s. Any residual gas lighting found in homes being converted was either capped off at the meter or, more usually, removed altogether. As of 2023, some gas street lighting still remains, mainly in central London and the Royal Parks. The production process differs from other methods used to generate gaseous fuels known variously as manufactured gas , syngas , Dowson gas, and producer gas . These gases are made by partial combustion of

5900-410: The first being that preheated air blown into the furnace reacts with the carbon in the form of coke to produce carbon monoxide and heat: Hot carbon monoxide is the reducing agent for the iron ore and reacts with the iron oxide to produce molten iron and carbon dioxide . Depending on the temperature in the different parts of the furnace (warmest at the bottom) the iron is reduced in several steps. At

6000-429: The fuel gas by enriching it with CO and hydrogen (H 2 ) produced by water gas reactions. Producer gas has a very low calorific value of 3.7 to 5.6 MJ/m (99 to 150 Btu/cu ft); because the calorific gases CO/H 2 are diluted with much inert nitrogen (from air) and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) (from combustion) The problem of nitrogen dilution was overcome by the blue water gas (BWG) process, developed in

6100-479: The furnace as the material falls downward. The end products are usually molten metal and slag phases tapped from the bottom, and waste gases ( flue gas ) exiting from the top of the furnace. The downward flow of the ore along with the flux in contact with an upflow of hot, carbon monoxide -rich combustion gases is a countercurrent exchange and chemical reaction process. In contrast, air furnaces (such as reverberatory furnaces ) are naturally aspirated, usually by

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6200-467: The furnace has a chair shape with the lower part of the shaft being narrower than the upper. The lower row of tuyeres being located in the narrow part of the shaft. This allows the upper part of the shaft to be wider than the standard. The blast furnaces used in the Imperial Smelting Process ("ISP") were developed from the standard lead blast furnace, but are fully sealed. This is because

6300-464: The furnace is a hearth of refractory material (bricks or castable refractory). Lead blast furnaces are often open-topped rather than having the charging bell used in iron blast furnaces. The blast furnace used at the Nyrstar Port Pirie lead smelter differs from most other lead blast furnaces in that it has a double row of tuyeres rather than the single row normally used. The lower shaft of

6400-469: The furnace next to it into which the waste gas (containing CO) from the furnace was directed and burnt. The resultant heat was used to preheat the air blown into the furnace. Hot blast enabled the use of raw anthracite coal, which was difficult to light, in the blast furnace. Anthracite was first tried successfully by George Crane at Ynyscedwyn Ironworks in south Wales in 1837. It was taken up in America by

6500-475: The furnace. Competition in industry drives higher production rates. The largest blast furnace in the world is in South Korea, with a volume around 6,000 m (210,000 cu ft). It can produce around 5,650,000 tonnes (5,560,000 LT) of iron per year. This is a great increase from the typical 18th-century furnaces, which averaged about 360 tonnes (350 long tons; 400 short tons) per year. Variations of

6600-475: The gas industry followed suit. Gas warm air heating found a market niche in new local authority housing where low installation costs gave it an advantage. These developments, the realignment of managerial thinking away from commercial management (selling what the industry produced) to marketing management (meeting the needs and desires of customers) and the lifting of an early moratorium preventing nationalised industries from using television advertising , saved

6700-692: The gas industry for long enough to provide a viable market for what was to come. In 1959 the Gas Council in Great Britain demonstrated that liquid natural gas (LNG) could be transported safely, efficiently and economically over long distances by sea. The Methane Pioneer shipped a consignment of LNG from Lake Charles, Louisiana , US, to a new LNG terminal on Canvey Island , in the Thames estuary in Essex, England. A 212-mile (341 km) long high-pressure trunk pipeline

6800-489: The gas-using equipment of almost thirteen million domestic, four hundred thousand commercial, and sixty thousand industrial customers were converted. Many dangerous appliances were discovered in this exercise and were taken out of service. The UK town gas industry ended in 1987 when operations ceased at the last town gas manufacturing plants in Northern Ireland (Belfast, Portadown and Carrickfergus; Carrickfergus gas works

6900-486: The head and upper body placed inside the appliance, the concentrated carbon monoxide would kill quickly. Sylvia Plath famously ended her life with this method. Originally created as a by-product of the coking process, its use developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries tracking the Industrial Revolution and urbanization . By-products from the production process included coal tars and ammonia , which were important raw materials (or "chemical feedstock ") for

7000-674: The increased demand for iron for casting cannons, the blast furnace came into widespread use in France in the mid 15th century. The direct ancestor of those used in France and England was in the Namur region, in what is now Wallonia (Belgium). From there, they spread first to the Pays de Bray on the eastern boundary of Normandy and from there to the Weald of Sussex , where the first furnace (called Queenstock) in Buxted

7100-492: The ingress of air. Any fuel gas surplus to needs may be disposed of by burning in the plant gas flare system. For users that burn gas directly fuel gas is supplied at a pressure of about 15 psi (1 barg). Gas turbines need a supply pressure of 250-350 psi (17-24 barg). Blast furnace A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron , but also others such as lead or copper . Blast refers to

7200-400: The iron's quality. Coke's impurities were more of a problem before hot blast reduced the amount of coke required and before furnace temperatures were hot enough to make slag from limestone free flowing. (Limestone ties up sulphur. Manganese may also be added to tie up sulphur.) Coke iron was initially only used for foundry work, making pots and other cast iron goods. Foundry work was

7300-399: The leather bellows, which wore out quickly. Isaac was granted a second patent, also for blowing cylinders, in 1757. The steam engine and cast iron blowing cylinder led to a large increase in British iron production in the late 18th century. Hot blast was the single most important advance in fuel efficiency of the blast furnace and was one of the most important technologies developed during

7400-486: The length of the country. This became the National Transmission System . All gas equipment in Great Britain (but not Northern Ireland) was converted (by the fitting of different-sized burner jets to give the correct gas/air mixture) from town gas to natural gas (mainly methane ) over the period from 1967 to 1977 at a cost of about £100 million, including writing off redundant town gas manufacturing plants. All

7500-523: The molten iron was tapped twice a day into water, thereby granulating it. The General Chapter of the Cistercian monks spread some technological advances across Europe. This may have included the blast furnace, as the Cistercians are known to have been skilled metallurgists . According to Jean Gimpel, their high level of industrial technology facilitated the diffusion of new techniques: "Every monastery had

7600-399: The particle size of the coke or charcoal is of great relevance. Therefore, the coke must be strong enough so it will not be crushed by the weight of the material above it. Besides the physical strength of its particles, the coke must also be low in sulfur, phosphorus , and ash. The main chemical reaction producing the molten iron is: This reaction might be divided into multiple steps, with

7700-457: The pig iron. It reacts with calcium oxide (burned limestone) and forms silicates, which float to the surface of the molten pig iron as slag. Historically, to prevent contamination from sulfur, the best quality iron was produced with charcoal. In a blast furnace, a downward-moving column of ore, flux, coke (or charcoal ) and their reaction products must be sufficiently porous for the flue gas to pass through, upwards. To ensure this permeability

7800-404: The principle of chemical reduction whereby carbon monoxide converts iron oxides to elemental iron. Blast furnaces differ from bloomeries and reverberatory furnaces in that in a blast furnace, flue gas is in direct contact with the ore and iron, allowing carbon monoxide to diffuse into the ore and reduce the iron oxide. The blast furnace operates as a countercurrent exchange process whereas

7900-419: The reaction zone. As the material travels downward, the counter-current gases both preheat the feed charge and decompose the limestone to calcium oxide and carbon dioxide: The calcium oxide formed by decomposition reacts with various acidic impurities in the iron (notably silica ), to form a fayalitic slag which is essentially calcium silicate , Ca Si O 3 : As the iron(II) oxide moves down to

8000-472: The steam cycle are kept as blue water gas. This gas is composed almost entirely of CO and H 2 , and burns with a pale blue flame similar to natural gas. BWG has a calorific value of 11 MJ/m (300 BTU/cu ft). Blue water gas lacked illuminants; it would not burn with a luminous flame in a simple fishtail gas jet as existed prior to the invention of the gas mantle in the 1890s. Various attempts were made to enrich BWG with illuminants from gas oil in

8100-441: The steel industry's coke ovens' by-products plants, coal gas is no longer made in the UK. It was replaced first by gas made from oil and later by natural gas from the North Sea . Gaseous fuel Fuel gas is contrasted with liquid fuels and solid fuels , although some fuel gases are liquefied for storage or transport (for example, autogas and liquified petroleum gas ). While their gaseous nature has advantages, avoiding

8200-479: The structure of horse powered reciprocators that already existed. That is, the circular motion of the wheel, be it horse driven or water driven, was transferred by the combination of a belt drive , a crank-and-connecting-rod, other connecting rods , and various shafts, into the reciprocal motion necessary to operate a push bellow. Donald Wagner suggests that early blast furnace and cast iron production evolved from furnaces used to melt bronze . Certainly, though, iron

8300-479: The table shows a typical composition. Natural gas is produced with water and gas condensate. These liquids have to be removed before the gas can be used as fuel. Even after treatment the gas will be saturated and liable to condense as liquid in the pipework. This can be reduced by superheating the fuel gas. In addition to chemical composition fuel gas may need to comply with parameters such as calorific value , Wobbe index, dewpoint, etc. The following specification

8400-449: The technologies of pipelaying that enable the transmission of gas over land and under sea across and between continents . Natural gas is now a world commodity . Such sources of supply are exposed to all the risks of any import. Monty Python parodied the conversion from coal to North Sea gas, and the jumping through hoops some encountered, in their "New Cooker Sketch," as part of the episode that began its second series in 1970. Coal gas

8500-402: The time) and seemed doomed to lose market share still further, except for cooking where its controllability gave it marked advantages over both electricity and solid fuel. The development of more efficient gas fires assisted gas to resist competition in the market for room heating. Concurrently a new market for whole house central heating by hot water was being developed by the oil industry and

8600-427: The top, where the temperature usually is in the range between 200 °C and 700 °C, the iron oxide is partially reduced to iron(II,III) oxide, Fe 3 O 4 . The temperatures 850 °C, further down in the furnace, the iron(II,III) is reduced further to iron(II) oxide: Hot carbon dioxide, unreacted carbon monoxide, and nitrogen from the air pass up through the furnace as fresh feed material travels down into

8700-400: The town gas and by-products produced, by the major three gas companies of London are summarised in the table. Coke is used as a smokeless fuel and for the manufacture of water gas and producer gas . Coal tar was subjected to fractional distillation to recover various products, including Used in the manufacture of sulfuric acid Used in the manufacture of fertilisers Coal gas

8800-429: The way they are produced: those found naturally, and those manufactured from other materials. Manufactured fuel gases are those produced by chemical transformations of solids, liquids, or other gases. When obtained from solids, the conversion is referred to as gasification and the facility is known as a gasworks . Manufactured fuel gases include: The coal gas made by the pyrolysis of coal contains impurities such

8900-620: The white hot checkerwork fire bricks inside the carburettor. The hot enriched gas would then flow into the superheater, where the gas would be further cracked by more hot fire bricks. Following the Second World War the slow recovery of the British coal mining industry led to shortages of coal and high prices. The decline of coal as a feedstock for town gas production using carbonisation is demonstrated in this graph. Coal-based town gas production, millions of therms New technologies for manufacturing coal gas using oil, refinery tail gases, and light distillates were developed. Processes included

9000-746: The world charcoal was cheaper while coke was more expensive even after the Industrial Revolution: e. g., in the US charcoal-fueled iron production fell in share to about a half ca. 1850 but still continued to increase in absolute terms until ca. 1890, while in João Monlevade in the Brazilian Highlands charcoal-fired blast furnaces were built as late as the 1930s and only phased out in 2000. Darby's original blast furnace has been archaeologically excavated and can be seen in situ at Coalbrookdale, part of

9100-583: The zinc produced by these furnaces is recovered as metal from the vapor phase, and the presence of oxygen in the off-gas would result in the formation of zinc oxide. Blast furnaces used in the ISP have a more intense operation than standard lead blast furnaces, with higher air blast rates per m of hearth area and a higher coke consumption. Zinc production with the ISP is more expensive than with electrolytic zinc plants, so several smelters operating this technology have closed in recent years. However, ISP furnaces have

9200-743: Was gas lighting , which enabled the widespread adoption of streetlamps and the illumination of buildings in towns. Fuel gas was also used in gas burners , in particular the Bunsen burner used in laboratories. It may also be used gas heaters , camping stoves, and even to power vehicles, as they have a high calorific value. Fuel gas is widely used by industrial, commercial and domestic users. Industry uses fuel gas for heating furnaces, kilns, boilers and ovens and for space heating and drying . The electricity industry uses fuel gas to power gas turbines to generate electricity. The specification of fuel gas for gas turbines may be quite stringent. Fuel gas may also be used as

9300-413: Was built from Canvey Island to Bradford. The pipeline and its branches provided Area Gas Boards with natural gas for use in reforming processes to make town gas. A large-scale LNG reception plant was commissioned on Canvey in 1964, which received LNG from Algeria in two dedicated tankers, each of 12,000 tonnes. The slow decline of the town gas industry in the UK was driven by the discovery of natural gas by

9400-521: Was built in about 1491, followed by one at Newbridge in Ashdown Forest in 1496. They remained few in number until about 1530 but many were built in the following decades in the Weald, where the iron industry perhaps reached its peak about 1590. Most of the pig iron from these furnaces was taken to finery forges for the production of bar iron . The first British furnaces outside the Weald appeared during

9500-473: Was essential to military success by the time the State of Qin had unified China (221 BC). Usage of the blast and cupola furnace remained widespread during the Song and Tang dynasties . By the 11th century, the Song dynasty Chinese iron industry made a switch of resources from charcoal to coke in casting iron and steel, sparing thousands of acres of woodland from felling. This may have happened as early as

9600-455: Was initially manufactured by independent companies but in the United Kingdom many of these later became municipal services . In 1948 there was a total of 1,062 gas undertakings. Both the private companies, about two-thirds of the total, and the municipal gas undertakings, about one-third, were nationalised under the Gas Act 1948 . Further restructuring took place under the Gas Act 1972 . For further details see British Gas plc . Apart from in

9700-520: Was its lower cost, mainly because making coke required much less labor than cutting trees and making charcoal, but using coke also overcame localized shortages of wood, especially in Britain and eleswhere in Europe. Metallurgical grade coke will bear heavier weight than charcoal, allowing larger furnaces. A disadvantage is that coke contains more impurities than charcoal, with sulfur being especially detrimental to

9800-414: Was made using producer gas technology. Producer gas is made by blowing air through an incandescent fuel bed (commonly coke or coal ) in a gas producer. The reaction of fuel with insufficient air for total combustion produces carbon monoxide (CO); this reaction is exothermic and self-sustaining. It was discovered that adding steam to the input air of a gas producer would increase the calorific value of

9900-624: Was probably being consumed as fast as the wood to make it grew. The first blast furnace in Russia opened in 1637 near Tula and was called the Gorodishche Works. The blast furnace spread from there to central Russia and then finally to the Urals . In 1709, at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, England, Abraham Darby began to fuel a blast furnace with coke instead of charcoal . Coke's initial advantage

10000-469: Was used to power several historic balloon ascents in the 19th century (see The Aeronauts ). In many ways, Germany took the lead in coal gas research and carbon chemistry. With the labours of August Wilhelm von Hofmann , the whole German chemical industry emerged. Using the coal gas waste as feedstock, researchers developed new processes and synthesized natural organic compounds such as Vitamin C and aspirin . The German economy relied on coal gas during

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