The gas question : economic and sanitary / by James Adams, M.D.

  • James Maxwell Adams
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The gas question : economic and sanitary / by James Adams, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    the initial pressure at the works is at the lowest. For the initial pressure under which the gas is forced from tlie gasholders at the works into the distributing mains is necessarily varied throughout the twenty four liours, increasing with the coming on of the dark hours, the lighting up of shops, public works, and dwellings, and decreasing as the time approaches for turning off lights at the same places. In illustration, I have seen a service pipe which, at the low level of Buchanan Street, at twelve o’clock mid-day, delivered only eighteen cubic feet of gas per hour; but which, at eight o’clock evening, passed thirty feet per hour. This difference was owing to the increased initial pressure at the works during the evening. The pressure is therefore never the same, either at the works or in the same locality of the city during different hours of the 24, and this variation, which is considerable, taxes the performance of the very best possible construction of gas burner. The pressure at the burner varies from another cause. Gas is elastic, and its molecules can be crowded together and packed into smaller compass, and being at the same time much lighter than air it ascends wherever it has freedom. Owing to these | inherent properties gas arises from the lower levels of the city to j the mains and supply pipes of the upper levels, where it ] accumulates, and becoming more closely packed it springs from j the burner -with an elastic force that may be three or five | times greater than at the lower levels, where the mains at , the same moment may be comparatively empty. I have 1 frequently found at the low level of the Broomielaw that the pressure of gas delivered from a |-iuch service pipe scarcely - exceeded 5-lOths of an inch, and was barely sufficient to lift the . valve of a volume regulator constructed to work at a pressure of ‘ 7-lOths ; while within the same hour I have found at Cambridge Street—about 100 feet of a higher level—that the pressure was ' 17-lOths, and the valve of the’same regulator and also the valve of a p-essure regulatoi- were so forced as to deliver gas much beyond the stipulated quantity for which the instruments were registered. Hirrh pressure, as I have defined it, means therefore great wtiste, Avhether that high pressure occurs at the point of delivery from the mains into the service pipes of the consumer or at the burners of the consumer. Under high pressure the gas issues from an ordinary | gas burner wdth great velocity, “blows and burns with a Haring or flickering flame. Gas molecules dart through the flame not only un-
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