Читать книгу Description of the Process of Manufacturing Coal Gas. For the Lighting of Streets Houses, and Public Buildings онлайн

38 страница из 52

The production of gas-lights, is therefore analogous to that of flame produced from tallow, wax, or oil. All these substances possess, in common with coal, the elements of certain peculiar matters, which are capable of being converted into inflammable elastic fluids by the application of heat.

The capillary tubes, formed by the wick of a candle, or lamp, serve the office of the retorts, placed in the heated furnace in the gas-light process and in which the inflammable gaseous fluid is developed. The wax tallow or oil, is drawn up into these ignited tubes, and is decomposed into carburetted hydrogen gas, and from the combustion of this substance the illumination proceeds. In the lamp as well as in the candle, the oil, or tallow, must therefore be decomposed before they can produce a light, but for this purpose the decomposition of a minute quantity of the materials successively, is sufficient to give a good light. Thus originates the flame of a candle or lamp.

Nothing more therefore is aimed at in the gas-light process, than to separate the immediate products which coal affords, when submitted to a temperature of ignition in a close vessel; to collect these products in separate reservoirs, and to convey one of the products, the inflammable gas, by means of pipes and branching tubes, to any required distance, in order to exhibit it there at the orifice of the conducting tube, so that it may be used as a candle or lamp.