gas works

[aostling]

I'm watching a 1947 movie, The Lady from Shanghai, filmed in San Francisco. One shot shows the Golden Gate Bridge viewed from Telegraph Hill. I did a double-take and hit the pause button when I noticed a huge gas works, located in North Beach. That is long gone.

Seattle has its Gas Works Park -- I recall the days when it was producing coal gas, on the peninsula jutting into Lake Union. I saw a lot of gas works receivers on the horizon when I climbed St. Paul's in London, but I assume they are museum pieces too.

Are there any gas works still in business? What made 'em so dirty?

[J Tiers]

Town gas was made by burning coal in a retort, then shooting in steam. The heat dissociated the water vapor, and also dissociated the carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide.

Net result was carbon monoxide and hydrogen, hence the distraught housewives putting head in the oven to commit suicide. Kind of like a richer. cleaner version of blast furnace gas.

Lots of coal, ashes, steam, etc.

[J. R. Williams]

JT
Remember the water seal, floating gas storge tanks, owned by Laclede that used to be near downtown St.Louis?

JRW

[J Tiers]

The ones near highway 40 (aka I64) are going away. but the ones by I44 at the River Des Peres are still there.

They now do not use them as there is storage underground North of town.


Note: The "town gas" producers used them because they absorbed peaks and valleys in demand. A gas generator cannot be started and stopped, or easily adjusted in production volume quickly.

The gas works could make gas and fill the telescoping gas reservoir at a relatively constant rate, and not worry about too much or too little production.

[dicks42000]

Yep;

J Tiers was right again, most large towns/ cities had a "gas works". Despite the yuppies, there was/ is nothing funky or trendy about the site. Coal and it's associated processes, handling and waste products are very dirty...
Also as stated, "town gas" , "producer gas" or "coal gas" was mostly CO hence the suicide connection to gas ovens, depressed "housewives" in the movies, etc. Typical Hollyweird...

Here in Vancouver, BC. the gas plant was located near False Creek in what was an industrial area next to the CPR yards. The steam locomotives just happened to run on coal that came, via the CPR, from CP owned coal mines in the Kootneys or Alberta, and also happened to supply the coastal steamer fleet, some of which belonged to the CPR and the Union Steamship Co. Another source was coal mined on Vancouver Island....made Robert Dunsmuirs family rich and killed more than a few Welsh, Scottish, English, Chinese, Finnish, Norwegian etc. miners.....

I still can see evidence of the original low pressure gas distribution system in the older areas of Vancouver. (Inches water column gas main to your house...) My parents have memories of the "gascolators" (telescopic storage tanks) down by False Creek. The existing piping network was simply converted to natural gas from coal gas. Here, our low pressure steel piping system is slowly being phased out in favour of higher pressure poly piping to meet the increasing load demand and for seismic safety.

All under ground work I do is in plastic or copper. Building piping is copper tubing or "wardflex" unless it is just a quick addition to some existing steel piping. We do still have to use steel piping at high pressures (over 10 psig, 2 1/2 in. in dia and welded at that.) on some industrial jobs. Some special cases and exemptions to the code still exist....

This weekend I'm working on some modifications to an old steel piping system at SFU (university boiler plant). A machining-related part of it will essentially mean creating some $45 (cdn) black pipe caps. Guess that helps to pay for the newer lathe....(Remembering I have a 75 yr old Atlas and a 60-some yr. old South Bend 13 which is doing the job....) Thankfully the S-B has a taper attachment. The Rocky vert. mill and it's DRO (new toy) just finished saving a few corroded boiler hand hole covers. (Re-machining gasket faces.) Both jobs worked out cheaper for me (not the best or fastest operator) to do on manual machines at $70.00 (cdn)/ Hr. rather than have my neighbour do them on his HAAS VMC. Understandably, he was quoting based on including programming, set-up time etc....Me, I just do it.....

Anyhow, that's what I'm doing for machining. If I'm lucky, might also go fishing or riding this weekend....Enjoy Labour Day.
Rick

[J Tiers]

The local gas company replaced lines with copper here. After a few house explosions, they have stopped.

The copper gets pinhole leaks, the gas migrates along the pipe, outside, and leaks into the house where the pipe penetrates the foundation, because that is the only easy outlet. it is only a matter of time, then, until the house is scattered over the surrounding blocks, with or without occupants.

Something about the ground chemistry. Copper normally is fairly resistant to corrosion.

[ptjw7uk]

Only good point about town gas was that it was 'wet' did for the steel pipes but seals would last unlike natural which would dry them all out and so the leaks would start.
I remember in the early sixties the company I worked for was installing a new power cable through the streets of east London and when the trench was dug the resudents rushed out to find who had cut of the gas. The diggers said thay had not cut through any pipes and so they hadn't as the iron pipes had all rusted away and the gas had been flowing through the clay kept moist by the towns gas.
Nowadays they use yellow plastic pipe in the ground
Peter

[Timleech]

I'm watching a 1947 movie, The Lady from Shanghai, filmed in San Francisco. One shot shows the Golden Gate Bridge viewed from Telegraph Hill. I did a double-take and hit the pause button when I noticed a huge gas works, located in North Beach. That is long gone.

Seattle has its Gas Works Park -- I recall the days when it was producing coal gas, on the peninsula jutting into Lake Union. I saw a lot of gas works receivers on the horizon when I climbed St. Paul's in London, but I assume they are museum pieces too.

Are there any gas works still in business? What made 'em so dirty?

I visited the last operating coal gas works in the UK, on the Scottish island of Cumbrae, about 30 years ago & it was due for imminent closure. That was a 'man & a boy' scale of plant.

I believe some of the telescoping gasholders in the UK are still in use for gas storage, but they're not well suited to natural gas & its higher pressures.

Tim

[Optics Curmudgeon]

A few words about gas works. The sites are easy to find, many are still brownfields because of the cleanup costs. A search of a superfund list for a given state reveals them. Always adjacent to the railroad tracks, for access to coal supplies, and oil for the "carburetted coal gas" process. These facilities were remarkable efficient, using virtually all of the coal for profitable purposes. Even the byproducts were used, aspirin is a coal tar derivative, for example. Don't confuse efficient with clean, however, what little was left was REALLY bad stuff, containing things like dioxin. Dig at the site of a former gas works and you smell moth balls from residual nathalene. Not much of this sludge was left over, so most just buried it on site, hence the contamination. I lived in Worcester, MA when they tore down the gas works, which was a big one. Seeing inside gave me the feeling that I was lucky not to have had to work there. Later I lived in Trenton, NJ, and the gas works site on Brunswick Ave. was a large brownfield with a double chain link fence around it. Natural gas and early environmental regulations made producer gas unprofitable, in the US most closed in the 1940's, although they were usually just abandoned, to be torn down later. As has been said, the gasometers were just as useful for storing natural gas and so are still in use in some places. One example can be seen in the opening of The Sopranos.

Joe

[Peter S]

Over the years I have spent a bit of time exploring the Docklands area in London - one of the sites I had a look at in the early 1990's was Beckton Gas Works, the worlds biggest in its day, but there wasn't much left when I looked around. Just some massively built old ruins (which had just been used for making a film - "Full Metal Jacket" I think was the title). What does remain however is an impressive mountain! This is made from some residue from the process which slowly turned into a landmark in the area. At that time it was being used as an artifical ski slope!

BTW, Beckton handled around 2 million tons of coal per year, unloading it from ships at around 2000 tons per hour by crane. The gas works used around 1 million tons and transhipped the rest to other company gas works (1930's info).

There are still gasometers around London, I saw them recently. I can only guess they are being used for Natural Gas storage?

I watched a home-movie a couple of years back showing the demolition of a gas holder in Dunedin (NZ). Filming inside showed extremely long poles going up, possibly to hold the unit in a raised position when empty. There was a lot of nasty sludge which they had to mix with concrete and bury in special conditions.