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1 2 coal tar 8 1 3 sulfur 8 1 4 ammonia 8 2 structure of the uk coal gas industry 9 see also 10 references toggle references subsection 10 1 notes 10 2 sources 11 further reading toggle the table of contents coal gas 34 languages العربية azərbaycanca български català čeština dansk deutsch ελληνικά español euskara فارسی suomi français gaeilge हिन्दी magyar հայերեն italiano 日本語 한국어 नेपाली nederlands norsk bokmål polski português русский slovenčina shqip svenska türkçe українська tiếng việt 粵語 中文 edit links article talk english read edit view history tools tools move to sidebar hide actions read edit view history general what links here related changes upload file permanent link page information cite this page get shortened url switch to legacy parser print export download as pdf printable version in other projects wikidata item appearance move to sidebar hide from wikipedia the free encyclopedia manufactured gaseous fuel towngas redirects here the term may also refer to the brand name of the hong kong and china gas company this article needs more citations please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources unsourced material may be challenged and removed find sources coal gas news newspapers books scholar jstor june 2009 learn how and when to remove this message coal gas is a flammable gaseous fuel made from coal and supplied to the user via a piped distribution system originating from a gasworks 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 1 the original coal gas was produced by the coal gasification reaction 2 and the burnable component consisted of a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen in roughly equal quantities by volume thus coal gas is highly toxic 3 other compositions contain additional calorific gases such as methane 4 produced by the fischer tropsch process and volatile hydrocarbons together with small quantities of non calorific gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen before the development of natural gas supply and transmission during 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 at the time a frequent method of committing suicide was the inhalation of gas from an unlit oven with the head and upper body placed inside the appliance the concentrated carbon monoxide would kill quickly 5 sylvia plath ended her life with this method 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 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 6 7 led to the 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 remained 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 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 manufacturing processes edit main article coal gasification see also gasification and illuminating gas gas works park seattle preserves most of the equipment for making coal gas this is the only such plant surviving in the united states 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 a feedstock to chemical reactions that produce gas 8 9 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 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 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 the 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 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 ft 3 with values around 20 mj m 3 540 btu ft 3 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 gas for industrial use edit main article syngas an illustration of typical polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons source nasa fuel gas for industrial use 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 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 3 99 to 150 btu ft 3 because the calorific gases co h 2 are diluted with much inert nitrogen from air and carbon dioxide co 2 from combustion 2c s o 2 2 co exothermic producer gas reaction c s h 2 o g co h 2 endothermic water gas reaction c 2 h 2 o co 2 2 h 2 endothermic co h 2 o co 2 h 2 exothermic water gas shift reaction the problem of nitrogen dilution was overcome by the blue water gas bwg process developed in 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 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 3 300 btu cu ft blue water gas lacked illuminants it would not burn with a luminous flame in a simple fishtail gas jet as existed before the invention of the gas mantle in the 1890s various attempts were made to enrich bwg with illuminants from gas oil in 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 the manufactured gas era 10 a cwg generating set consisted of three elements a producer generator carburettor and a super heater connected in series with gas pipes and valves 11 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 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 fire bricks 12 gas in post war britain edit mantles in their unused flat packed form new manufacturing processes edit following the second world war the slow recovery of the british coal mining industry led to shortages of coal and high prices 13 uk coal production year production million tons production cost ton 1947 197 2 00 1950 216 2 40 1953 223 3 05 1956 222 3 85 1959 206 4 15 1961 191 4 55 1965 187 4 60 1967 172 4 95 the decline of coal as a feedstock for town gas production using carbonisation is demonstrated in this graph 14 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 the lurgi process catalytic reforming the catalytic rich gas process steam reforming of rich gas and the gas recycle hydrogenator process 15 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 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 14 oil based town gas production millions of therms domestic heating edit 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 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 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 the gas industry for long enough to provide a viable market for what was to come natural gas as feedstock edit 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 was built from canvey island to bradford 16 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 17 conversion to natural gas edit the slow decline of the town gas industry in the uk was driven by the discovery of natural gas by 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 the lng plant on canvey 13 18 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 is shown in the graph below 14 until 1968 this was from supplies of lng from algeria from 1968 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 yorkshire bacton norfolk and st fergus aberdeenshire 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 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 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 is now a restored gasworks museum 19 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...