TY - JOUR
AB - III.IT has been proposed to carburet and enrich poor coal gas by admixture with it of an oxy-oil gas, in which crude oils are cracked at a comparatively low temperature, and are then mixed with from 12 to 24 per cent. of oxygen gas. Oil gas made at low temperature is per se of little use as an illuminant, as it burns with a smoky flame, and does not travel well; but, when mixed with a certain amount of oxygen, it gives a very brilliant white light and no smoke, while, as far as experiments have at present gone, its travelling powers are much improved. At first sight it seems a dangerous experiment to mix a heavy hydrocarbon gas with oxygen; but it must be remembered that, although hydrogen and carbon monoxide only need to be mixed with but half of their own volume of oxygen to produce the most explosive compound, yet as the number of carbon and hydrogen atoms in the combustible gas increases, so does the amount of oxygen needed. So that coal gas requires rather more than its own volume, and ethylene three times its volume, to yield the maximum explosive results; while these mixtures begin to be explosive when 10 per cent. of oxygen is combined with hydrogen or water gas, 30 per cent. with coal gas, and more than 50 per cent, with oil gas of the character used. It is claimed that if this gas were used as an enricher of coal gas, 5 per cent. of it would increase the luminosity of 16-candle gas by about 40 per cent. Oxygen has been obtained for some time past from the air, on a commercial scale, by the Brin process; and it is now proposed to make oxygen by a process first introduced by Tessié du Motay, which consists of passing alternate currents of steam and air over sodic manganate heated to dull redness in an iron tube. The process has never been commercially successful, for the reason that the contents of the tube fused, and, flowing over the surface of the iron, rapidly destroyee the tubes or retorts; and also, as soon as fusion took place, the mass became so dense that it had little or no action on the air passing over it; but it is now claimed that this trouble canbs overcome. Cheap oxygen would be an enormous boon to the gal manager, as, by mixing 0˙8 per cent, of oxygen with his coal gas before purification, he could not only utilize the method so successfully introduced by Mr. Valon at Ramsgate, but could also increase the illuminating value of his gas to a slight extent.
TI - Gaseous Illuminants1
JF - Nature
DO - 10.1038/043282a0
DA - 1891-01-22
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/gaseous-illuminants1-ebPn4SWX8u
SP - 282
EP - 285
VL - 43
IS - 1108
DP - DeepDyve
ER -