IMPROVEMENTS IN ARRANGE- MENTS AND APPARATUS TO BE USED IN THE WORKING OF GAS PURIFYERS
Year: 1880

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by John Woodward at the Office of the
Commissioners of Patents on the 7th January 1880.
JOHN WOODWARD, of the Firm of Adam Woodward & Sons, of the City of
Manchester, in the County of Lancaster, Engineers. "IMPROVEMENTS IN ARRANGE-
MENTS AND APPARATUS TO BE USED IN THE WORKING OF GAS PURIFYERS."
My Invention refers to mechanism and arrangements for raising, lowering, and
sustaining the lids of gas purifyers, and for elevating and conveying or distributing
the lime or oxide used in them.
Firstly. My Invention consists in arranging a screw in suitable bearings at each
corner of a gas purifyer so as to be capable of rotating in a screw nut held or
secured in the lid, these four screws being geered together by means of three shafts
and bevel wheels.
One of these shafts has fast and loose pulleys upon it for an open and crossed
driving belt, so that the shafts by traversing the belts may be rotated in either
direction, and thus be made to raise and lower the lid, which when elevated is
securely sustained by the four screws.
There is, or may be, a cap or tube for each screw jointed to the lid to prevent
any escape of gas if the screws are placed inside the purifyer.
The purifyers are generally placed in rows and motion is conveyed to the
mechanism for raising and lowering the lids by a shaft or shafts passing from end
to end of the house, which is or are driven by belts from the driving shaft of the
engine.
These shafts also give motion to elevators formed by "buckets" on an endless belt
which I arrange to discharge into a swing trough which is inclined so that the lime
or oxide will descend the trough by gravity into the purifyer, and as the trough can
turn round its axis the material is or can be distributed and discharged into the
purifyer as desired.
These troughs are, or may also be, arranged between two or more purifyers so as
to discharge into two or more of them.
Secondly. My Invention consists in another modification of apparatus whereby
the same hoisting mechanism is arranged so that it may be employed to lift any
one lid of a series of purifyers or any two or more lids at the same time if desired,
and consists in arranging supports to carry beams over the purifyers to sustain the
bearings of pulleys, one pulley over the centre of each lid, and also in arranging
a "crab" or hoisting gear so that the chain from its barrel will pass round and over
the pulleys on the beams.

page_text: To this main chain from the barrel a branch chain is attached for each purifyer
which is, or can be, connected, when required, with the lid of the purifyer to be
lifted, so that when the main chain is wound up the required lid will be lifted, and
when the desired height is attained it is secured by props under each corner or by.
fixed guides in holes fixed at each corner of the lid in which pins or cottars are
placed for the lid to rest upon.
1
In a house containing six or more purifyers the hoisting mechanism for the lids
and for giving motion to the elevators is driven by belts from one shaft which is
driven by a belt from the engine.
The elevators and conveying and distributing troughs in this modification are, or 1
may be, similar to those hereinbefore described.