Modern Gasworks Practice

Abstract

AMONG the many truths brought home to the country by the two national struggles in which it has recently been engaged, the importance of the coal distillation industry stands out conspicuously. The rational treatment of coking coal by such means before its combustion (a process which has been carried out in our chief cities for more than a century) provided during the world war enormous quantities of material for belligerent use. It was no less effective as an instrument of social peace during the coal war, for our town-dwellers of all classes throughout the length and breadth of the land satisfied much of their requirements for the cooking of food, and in most cases for lighting their homes, by a mixture consisting chiefly of the lightest of the common gases, hydrogen, fortified with carbon in various combinations, produced in the main by the direct or indirect gasification of coal. Its centrally organised provision has now become a necessity of modern life in all our towns and most of our villages, just as are those for the supply of water and electric energy, and for the disposal of sewage. These have been almost wholly developed as engineering problems, though in the three latter cases the mathematician and the chemist, the physicist and the bacteriologist, have from time to time laid down certain principles to be followed. It will not, however, be denied that the finger of science was too often disregarded in working out the processes ancillary to the production of town's gas, and it is interesting, therefore, to observe that a change of this attitude is indicated in the pages of this latest work upon the subject.

Modern Gasworks Practice.

By Alwyne Meade. Second edition, entirely rewritten and greatly enlarged. Pp. xii + 815. (London: Benn Bros., Ltd., 1921.) 55s.