IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF GAS FOR LIGHTING AND HEATING
Year: 1868

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by George Davies at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 4th
March 1868.-A communication from abroad by Louis Charles
Emile Vial, of Paris, France.
I, GEORGE DAVIES, of No. 1, Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn, in the
County of Middlesex, and No. 87, St. Vincent Street, in the City of
Glasgow, Civil Engineer and Patent Agent, do hereby declare the nature
of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF GAS
FOR LIGHTING AND HEATING," (a communication to me from abroad by
Louis Charles Emile Vial, of Paris, France,) to be as follows:-
This Invention relates to the decarburation of gas, the dehydro-
genation of ammonia, and the desulphuration of hydrosulphuric acid,
from which it is evident that the process employed is precisely the
reverse of those heretofore known and in use for the production of
lighting or carburetted hydrogen gases. It consists in decomposing
the gases by electricity, or by superheating either at the time of or
after their production and before or after their purification, either alone
or with coke mixed with steam, or with coke only, or with iron, or
with any other matter capable of reducing them.

page_text: or
by
Firstly. All gases and carburets of hydrogen, whether gaseous liquid
or solid, capable of being decomposed by means of electricity
heat and by decarburation, being thus converted into gases absolutely
fixed, undecomposable, uncondensable, noncarburetted and combustible,
such is hydrogen, which then doubles its volume. The bodies employed
for the production of the gas will be all combustible, organic, or mineral
matters, but principally fatty bodies, such as oils, fats, and so forth,
resinous matters, tar, bituminous schists, turf, wood, carbon, such as
coal and the like; in a word, all bodies capable of yielding by
distillation hydrogen, hydrocarburets, or ammonia, when heated alone
or with coke, either by itself or mixed with steam.
Secondly. As in superheating the water and ammoniacal salts which
are formed ordinarily in the manufacture of gas for illumination this
water and these salts are decomposed at a red heat (or by electricity)
parting with their hydrogen, the Inventor proposes to withdraw and
utilize this gas by the decomposition by means of electricity or of
heat, either at the time of or after their production, and before or after
their purification, either alone or with coke mixed with steam, or with
coke alone, or even with iron or other bodies capable of reducing them
of ammoniacal gas and all matters containing ammonia or capable of
forming it (as occurs in the distillation of coal) and of being decom-
posed by heat or electricity, parting at the same time with their
hydrogen.
Lastly. As this superheating of the gas causes decomposition not
only of the water and the ammonia, but also that of the sulphuretted
hydrogen which accompanies both in the distillation of coal, and which
exists in great quantities in animal matters, the Inventor proposes
also to extract this illuminating gas by superheating or by decomposing
by means of electricity the ammoniacal and hydrosulphuric acid gases
of night soil, urine, sewage, and other organic vegetable or animal
matters (containing either free hydrogen or hydrosulphates, or ammonia
in any form, whether gaseous, liquid, or solid) in such a manner as to
dehydrogenate them by desulphuration and by the same means as
above pointed out, heating them either alone or with alkalies, such
as chalk, potash, soda, and the like.
And further, carrying out the principle that what are called com-
bustible gases only produce combustion and flame on being mixed or
surrounded with oxygen, either pure or mixed, with which they combine

page_text: and form sometimes explosive and sometimes non-explosive mixtures,
the latter being less explosive in proportion as the mixture of air and
gas approaches the limit of the saturation necessary to its combustion
and chemical combination; the Inventor also proposes to mix (either
in the gasometer, or in the meter, or at the burner) this heating and
lighting gas with the atmospheric air in the proportion of from once to
several times its own volume in gas, so as to increase at once its density
and volume, without injuring its combustibility or its luminous power,
by thus furnishing it with part or the whole of the air which is necessary
to its combustion.