Gasworks

A gas station is a facility for the production, storage and provision of technical gases, especially those used for heating and lighting purposes.

On March 2, 1810 was born in London, the first gas station, the gas produced by coal gasification in a coking plant.

A gas plant is made up of the plant for the production and purification of the gas as well as the systems for measuring the amount of gas for storage, such as in a gas tank, as well as compressors and valves for the distribution and supply of line pressure.

In addition to the plant for the production of town gas are denoted by gasworks and municipal enterprises, who were responsible for the construction and operation of the gas system, and the above occurring distribution of the gas. Gas works were ' often summarized in terms of municipal socialism with electricity plants and water plants to municipal utilities. In part, her name has kept the company name to the distributor of natural gas even after the conversion from producer gas from town, such as at GASAG Berlin gas Werke Aktiengesellschaft, or gas, electricity and water utilities Cologne AG.

Gas Received

When they went to over in the 1950s and 1960s to provide natural gas interconnections, this was the closure of many gas stations and the demolition of a large part of their buildings result. However, the gasometer were often preserved because they still have a function. The oldest gasometer is from the period around 1830 and is located in Fulham. Built in 1854 Point Breeze gas station in Philadelphia, is still in operation and contains an extraordinary number of plants from the 19th century. Examples of well-preserved plants in Germany are the gas plant in Neustadt (Dosse ) and the gas Augsburg plant.

Due to the often decades- long gas plant operation, many of the former gasworks areas in soil and groundwater are contaminated by phenols, hydrocarbons and cyanides. The redevelopment of these contaminated sites designed to sometimes be complicated.

Produced gas types

In a gas works mostly coal gas or one of the following types of gas produced in the furnace house by coal gasification. If instead of coal, the poor to be gasified wood used is also called wood gasification. The furnace house consisted of several furnaces which supplied the so-called raw gas. In older gas works were for the gasification retort furnaces in use, later more economically operated furnaces, such as those used in coke ovens. It was built as a solid product in the oven coke. This was per retort or furnace chamber ejected about once a day, deleted and then sold or self- consumed in the gas plant as fuel.

The resulting under the coal gasification raw gas was cooled and subjected to the wash house a gas scrubber to remove unwanted constituents such as tar, ammonia water and naphthalene separate. Addition, there were gas stations from various additional structures such as water towers, measuring equipment, the generator house for the production of generator gas for the ovens to ensure supplies in the oven house, and a gas sucker house in which exhausters, technically early forms of waste or Ansaugapparaten, were housed. They conducted the generated gas further into the gasometer or in the pipeline network.

In gas stations, among the following gases were prepared:

• Wood gas which was made ​​from wood
• Brown coal gas instead of coal was used lignite
• Town gas or coal gas, coke oven gas, which has shone brighter than open flame
• Blue gas or gas oil, was prepared from the oil, the gas was bottled
• Acetylene gas, a product made from water and carbide gas
• Aerogengas air or gas produced from volatile hydrocarbons ( gasoline, petroleum ether, gasoline, etc.) and air
• Water gas, which was prepared from coke and water vapor
• Producer gas, water gas similar, only with additional air
• Similarly, one can produce flammable gas mixtures, etc. also from bone, pitch, peat, resin, fat.

Example illuminating gas production

The coal gas production from coal is divided into the following steps:

• Crude gas by dry distillation of the coal at about 600 ° C to 1200 ° C in the furnace
• Cleaning of the raw gas of Tar and condensation in the so-called Teervorlage means of condensation and in Teerscheidern
• Naphthalene by washing the oil with oils
• Hydrogen sulfide by passing the gas through iron hydroxide, for example in the form of bog iron ore
• Benzene by washing the oil with oils

Thereafter, the gas acts as a buffer on the usage fluctuations gas reservoir and the gas regulation has led to the consumption points.

By-products

In addition to the main product gas in gas works were a series of so-called by-products. The most important are coke, crude tar, benzene, naphthalene, toluene, ammonia, and sulfur. During the coke used as fuel in the gas company or was sold, the remaining materials were sold mainly depending on market conditions directly or after processing and further processing in the chemical industry or as used in created by processing ammonium sulfate as a fertilizer in agriculture .. The sale of by- products could so the sale price be reduced from town gas.