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In these days of strict sanitary inspection it seems strange that the air in the neighbourhood of gas-works is still allowed to become contaminated by the escape of impure compounds from the various portions of the gas-making apparatus.
Though Beaumont had never seen gaslight before, except at the illumination of his father's colliery office after the Peace of Amiens, which was accomplished in a very simple and original manner, without either condenser, purifier, or gas-holder, and though he knew nothing of the art of gas-making, he had the courage to apply for the situation.
They are consequently as far as possible removed as impurities in the process of gas-making. These are nitrogen, carbonic acid gas, and the destructive sulphur compounds, sulphuretted hydrogen and carbon bisulphide vapour.
The improvements connected with gas-making have been steadily progressive; scarcely a year has passed from the date of Murdoch's efforts to the present time, without some or many decided steps having been made. The progress of electric-lighting has been a series of spasmodic leaps, backward as well as forward.
Good coal should yield as much as 80 per cent. of coke, but owing to the unsatisfactory manner of its production, this proportion is seldom yielded, whilst the coke which is familiar to householders, being the residue left in the retorts after gas-making, usually contains so large a proportion of sulphur as to make its combustion almost offensive.
Such methods of combustion as this, though valuable, are plainly of limited application; but for the great bulk of fuel consumption some gas-making process must be looked to. No crude combustion of solid fuel can give ultimate perfection.
The first, and perhaps, most important portion of the apparatus used in gas-making is the series of retorts into which the coal is placed, and from which, by the application of heat, the various volatile products distil over.
Bleaching, dyeing, calico-printing, gas-making, soap-making, sugar-refining, the reduction of metals from their ores, with innumerable other productive industries, are dependent upon chemistry. Agriculture, the basis of all the other arts, is in the same condition.
The ammoniacal liquor which has been passing over during distillation of the coal, and which has been collecting in the hydraulic main and in other parts of the gas-making apparatus, is set aside to be treated to a variety of chemical reactions, in order to wrench from it its useful constituents.
The bleacher, the dyer, the calico-printer, are severally occupied in processes that are well or ill done according as they do or do not conform to chemical laws. Smelting of copper, tin, zinc, lead, silver, iron, must be guided by chemistry. Sugar-refining, gas-making, soap-boiling, gunpowder-manufacture, are operations all partly chemical; as are likewise those which produce glass and porcelain.
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