In the world history of the 19th century, there is a lot of information about the production and use of combustible gases in almost all developed countries at that time. Many skeptics, and not without reason, believe that the gas equipment for various purposes that existed at that time was so developed that it could be confused with electrical equipment. In addition, not just with electrical equipment, but with one that used the currently lost consumption of energy from the atmospheric resource. Maybe there is some catch here? Let's try to understand (spoiler - there is a catch).
But before delving into the topic, consider a brief historical background. Natural gas on an industrial scale began to be used only not earlier than the 30s of the last century. In particular, for the first time in the USSR and in Russian history in general, the Saratov-Moscow gas pipeline was put into operation in 1942 (we will postpone this event in memory), thanks to the works of the same Beria. On a national scale, natural gas began to be used only in the 60s. For a number of reasons, people could not use natural gas on an industrial scale before the second half of the 19th century. Gas in those days was extracted in other ways, if you generalize them, it was a high-temperature effect on various materials and components - wood, coal or oil in a confined space. There were several ways to extract such gas, depending on the raw material,they have improved over the years. Its main application was indoor and outdoor lighting. The gas was called that - luminous gas.
According to official history, such a gas supply at the beginning of the 20th century could not withstand the competition with the growing electricity supply, and sank into oblivion along with the factories for the production of this gas. There is a certain logic in this. The luminaire gas, in spite of technological purification during production, contained many impurities. During the combustion of the lamp gas, harmful substances were released into the air, and the lamps themselves could not have the performance that electric ones provided. Despite a number of improvements in gas lighting devices, with the invention of glow lamps, the picture has changed slightly. Electric lighting devices slowly and surely replaced gas ones. Let's not take into account now that in the 19th century there was electrical equipment that operated due to the atmospheric resource,including lighting - this is a topic for another article. Let's imagine that everything was as written in the official history regarding the evolution of gas and electric lighting devices.
According to information from one of the readers living in Europe and interested in this topic, quite interesting data have been obtained about the struggle between gas and electricity in the very western part of Ukraine, when it still had nothing to do with the USSR. The old people who live there remember this. In their words, the picture looked like this.
At the end of the 19th century, almost all houses in Lviv had individual electrical installations on the roofs, these installations ensured the satisfaction of all household needs - lighting, heating, hygiene, cooking (as agreed, we will not talk about this further in detail). Further, for some unknown reason, these installations began to be changed to free gas, which was bred around the house in special pipes made of a material similar to lead. These pipes were hidden in plaster. Sometimes houses were built directly for gas supply, these pipes were laid immediately during the construction phase. For some unknown reason, the gasification of houses was unsystematic and with rejection. It happened that on one side of the street there were alternating houses with electricity and gas supply. They were even labeled with special symbols that have survived to this day:
On the left is the house in which there was gas, on the right - electricity. Both symbols are above the doors. Apparently, this had some meaning, and those who intended to buy or rent a house did not care. But then it gets even more interesting. In the 20th century, both of these methods began to rapidly replace free wired electricity. In gasified houses, wires began to be laid in the very pipes where gas had previously flowed.
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And after some time this electricity became paid, at first symbolically, then not very much. Why were these combinations with free gas and then free electricity needed? Everything is pretty simple here. Some of the historical characters said that there is no freebie in this world. If you are given something for free, it means that someone else paid for it. And who could pay in this case? After all, gas was produced by factories that could not function free of charge by definition. But we will return to this later, and now we will delve into the materiel.
There is one interesting work on the network on the history of artificial combustible gases. It was composed by people with a scientific degree, and at the same time they worked with many literary sources, so there is no point in not trusting this work. Some quotes from there I would like to cite for a complete understanding of what was happening at that time.
Very interesting data are given for Russia. Why such an imbalance in gas consumption, if the Empire at that time already owned both Donbass coal and Baku oil, and had a network of railways to transport all this? Was the whole country lit up with candles and torches? Judging by the archival historical photos, not at all. Even in county towns, wealthy houses had chandeliers on the ceilings, which many researchers identified as gas chandeliers. So maybe they weren't gas at all? It is difficult to answer this question unequivocally. There may be several reasons for this, from trivial additions in statistics to the dark period in Russian history from the Franco-Prussian to the Russian-Japanese war. It was at that time, judging by the photo, that the cities were deserted, there were practically no forests, and the huge rivers dried up. It is possible that this was the result of some element,which all historical sources hide. The country was in chaos, and the population had no time for gas. Another interesting phrase - "so in 1886, all St. Petersburg gas plants sold 21.1 million m3 of gas." So to whom did these Petersburg plants sell their gas? There are a lot of incomprehensible questions, but let's continue.
A very strange trend. The Great Empire, over which the sun never set, and which in terms of population was in the top three Empires that existed at that time, is slowly and surely giving up gas consumption. And this at a time when there was an industrial boom in the country until 1917. Everyone knows what happened after 1917, but nevertheless in 1929 only one gas plant remained. Did everything so quickly switched to electricity according to the GOELRO plan? Of course not. The power plants built according to this plan were built only in 1932, and point by point in large cities. Why did the Bolsheviks need to close gas factories? It was not for nothing that H. Wells spoke of Lenin that he, rejecting all “utopians,” in the end fell into the utopia of electrification himself. But Lenin did not fall into utopia at all. He was well motivated from the outside to promote this plan,and he did not find most of its implementation. So why were the gas factories so guilty before the Bolsheviks? It seems that ideologically they did not fit religious buildings. Another incomprehensible question, but let's continue.
Figure 1 - Generator (vertical coal furnace).
What could be easier? Air is blown from below to support combustion. The lower layer of raw materials burns, heating the upper ones and causing their thermal decomposition. The resulting gas in crude form enters the pipe from the top. The raw material is also loaded from above. It is in this form in historical sources that retort furnaces are found almost everywhere. And we get that some part of the raw material is burned to produce gas. There are some questions to this picture, but this is probably enough for general perception. Let's move on to the feasibility study.
Let us assume that ordinary bituminous coal gives a light gas output of 0.3 m3 / kg. If in 1886 all the St. Petersburg gas factories sold 21.1 million m3 of gas, then they consumed 70.333 thousand tons of coal for it. These are 1,034 modern open-top wagons with a carrying capacity of 68 tons. Where could such a quantity of coal come from if the Yekaterinovskaya Railways, which connected the Yuzovskie mines in the Donbass with St. Petersburg, were commissioned in 1904 and 1908? Suppose coal could have come through the port from abroad, but again, where did it come from? Looking at the success of European countries in the production of gas, we can conclude that they spent all their own and colonial coal resources only for themselves, and if they sold something to Russia, then a small part. It turns out just another historical nonsense. Either gas in St. Petersburg was produced in the wrong volume, as the statistics tell us, or it was not produced from coal. And most likely, both. Unfortunately, there are no publicly available photographs of Russian gas plants in the 19th century to estimate their capacity at least approximately.
However, there are a lot of photos of gas factories in other countries of the 19th century on the network.
This is a small-capacity gas plant in Germany, late 19th century. Obviously, the plant worked on raw wood, the mountains of which lie nearby. Don't you find the oddity in the photo? That's right, chimneys do not emit smoke and look more like antique columns. And if you look at the drawing of a retort furnace, then questions arise, namely, what are these pipes for at all, if the gas coming out of the furnace is a working useful product that cannot be released into the pipe.
A similar picture is at a gas plant in Australia. There is also a chimney, and oddly enough, it does not smoke.
This is already a more serious plant in France. As you can see, smoke or steam comes from anywhere, but not from pipes. There are a lot of photos of such factories in French sources.
All factories are like twin brothers, and differ only in the number of pipes. And again, no smoke comes out of the pipes, and again the pipes are somehow separate from the retort furnaces. What can go from these pipes to the retort furnaces underground? Probably need to look from the inside.
The picture is strange. The entire retort furnace is divided into many sections, and there is clearly nothing below the ground level for operator access. How could this all work? Obviously, each section was loaded with raw materials for gas production, and the gas itself was removed through pipes located outside, into some kind of collector outside this room. Waste raw materials were removed manually.
If the sections are located one above the other, then their uniform heating was not burning at the top or bottom of the fuel. The raw materials for combustion and for the production of gas were clearly separated from each other. And in general, what could heat these sections inside the furnace, if the escaping smoke is nowhere to be seen? With such colossal volumes, it would have been visible. This means that the secret of focus must be sought elsewhere.
There is one more small detail to all of the above. Gas must not only be produced, but also delivered to the end consumer. To do this, it must be collected in a container and pressurized so that the gas goes further through the pipelines to its destination. Photos of these containers have also been preserved.
Again, we begin to observe some kind of similarity with ancient architecture. Why is this all here? There is another rare photo of the top of a similar capacity from 1870.
Apparently, quite recently hostilities took place in this place, and one of the posts was cut off by something flying. The knob from this column is clearly visible, they are no longer on the adjacent columns. What were they for? It is clear that to compress gas in such a container, a pump was needed, which was located underground somewhere near this container. For obvious reason, this pump could not work from fuel combustion. Again, an incomprehensible technical puzzle, but before moving on to solving it, let's consider one more small detail.
Just above there is a photo of a gas plant in the Paris suburb of Vaugirard. Ironically, the library holds slightly more material on this gas plant than on the others. Let's get a look.
These are tanks for storing gas produced by this plant. No wonder, all the factories in Paris have similar designs. The main tank is buried in the ground, apparently for industrial safety purposes.
For some unknown reason, in 1923 this plant no longer exists, as there is a photo of.
On the site of the plant there is already a masterpiece of urbanism, and on the site of the reservoir there is either a flower bed or a pool. In France, it seems, there was no Bolshevism, but for some reason the gas plants there are being dismantled simultaneously with Soviet Russia. Weird coincidence. Probably, here it was explained by the struggle for the environment or, as in the British dominions, a change in urban planning policy. The plan of this plant has been preserved.
As you can see, on Rue Mademoiselle, two gas pipes come out from behind the territory of the plant, and go somewhere to the right. Since the plan is not oriented to the north, it was not easy to find this place on the modern map. Where do you think these two pipes go?
For those who do not know why two pipes enter churches, I recommend reading it here. Specifically about this church Saint-Jean-Baptiste Grenelle, we can say that it was officially rebuilt in 1872 and 1886. Probably at the same time as the launch and power up of the gas plant. The picture is starting to clear up. And yet, how did everything work there at these gas plants?
In 19th century France, a large number of advertising catalogs of various products were printed. Among other things, there were catalogs of some strange machines.
They are on a par with steam engines, and even somewhat similar to them. But they only use heated air (translate the annotation), and at the same time they do not contain chambers for fuel combustion (there are not even firebox doors on them). How is this heated air taken there? One of the copies can even be enlarged.
And really, where does the hot air come from, and even in a volume capable of rotating the engine from above? But if such a product was sold, then it was clearly not an artist's grotesque. And if you look at the photos of exhibitions and museum exhibits, we will see that it is definitely not grotesque.
This is the same magic boiler without a firebox, which took hot air from nowhere. It is clear that miracles do not happen in electromechanics, and this boiler could not take anything from anywhere. Only in the advertising catalog it is shown without two pipes that fit this boiler from below, and the pipe is drawn in a slightly simplified way. And if you imagine so?
Let's say the most interesting thing at a gas plant, namely the hot air source, is underground, and this air comes out into the retort furnace inside the building. Two pipes from the temple go up to this pipe and excite strong eddy currents in it due to atmospheric electricity, and so they heat the air and also drive it into the same retort furnace. Only the scale is not the same as in the advertising catalog. The air is heated to a very high temperature, and passing through the sections with raw materials for the production of gas, it arranges thermal decomposition without any fire and removes the gas into the very same manifold. Everything falls into place. Next, the gas goes to filtration and storage tanks. It's simple. The vases on these containers are also a power source of the same principle that drives the pump to maintain pressure. It's all about those very two pipes from the temple.
It is possible that, instead of air, such a boiler heated water into steam and drove it through retort furnaces. This method was common in the production of gas, for example, in America. Also, another option is not excluded that the boiler was inside the pipe itself, and a pipeline with hot air or steam under the ground went into the furnace. From a construction point of view, this option would be easier to implement.
Well, they could only adapt such boilers for firewood at the end of the 19th century. If you remove the metal connection between this boiler and the dome on the roof (or temple) or demolish the dome itself, it turns into a piece of iron, and is no longer suitable for anything other than firewood. There are many examples of this.
Why would such a beautiful boiler need such a crudely made pipe? These are the costs of switching to a new type of energy, when the old free sources were broken, and the new ones have not yet been made, they have not even been invented yet. In Russia, for example, even this was:
Well, physics is probably enough for this, and we turn to political economy.
As it was said, gas is the business of presidents. If I am not mistaken, the former president of Ukraine said this, and here he was one hundred percent right. This was, is and I think it will be. The corruption of the upper echelons of power has gone since the days when luminescent gas was invented. The idea to sell it on a national scale came up almost immediately. In monarchical states, the supreme ruler considers the treasury to be his personal property, and if it was replenished by selling gas, then even the very idea of selling gas would look quite noble. That's just the promotion of sales in the monarchies went with a creak, which was hampered by the presence of free-of-charge power plants near the house. Well, here, various marketing moves were used, which are as old as the world and have not changed even now. A great variety of ways have been invented for coercion to abandon them,from the usual administrative resource to the spread of rumors about the harmfulness of such systems. The final owners of the apartments were provided with gas free of charge, but paid for by the homeowners or third parties. In the conditions of a recoilless economy, even with a small subscription fee for gas, the maintenance of a gas plant paid off and brought in income. In fact, free energy was resold here with a slight modification, such a combination would very much like Ostap Bender. Ostap Bender would have liked such a combination very much. Ostap Bender would have liked such a combination very much.
Another thing is when the supreme rulers of the state were nominal civil servants with all the rights and duties of such. Such schemes for selling gas in the interests of the budget, without opportunities for personal enrichment, would look at least frivolous. Well, and accordingly, in the 19th century, the very schemes were thought out and implemented that are still being used in a modernized form. International banks and many other instruments were involved. One small BUT - it became not interesting to sell gas at a symbolic price, and the same free power plants that produced the same gas, and at the same time could be used individually at each house, bypassing active gas sales, prevented the price increase. Some kind of new solution was required to switch the rent to another energy carrier. The invention of generators of electricity and internal combustion engines solved this problem. In a fairly short period of time, both gas plants and domed free power plants were destroyed. The economy is firmly on the oil needle. As always happens, when the old was destroyed, they did not think at all how it could be replaced. As a result, it turned out several decades, when the old gas disappeared, and before the appearance of the new (natural) one lived with kerosene lamps and wood-burning stoves. Actually, those who started such a combination were not concerned and worried to a lesser extent. And the existence of free power plants in the recent past was forgotten quite quickly. Several wars and revolutions, plus the illiteracy of the masses, did their job in several decades. In a fairly short period of time, both gas plants and domed free power plants were destroyed. The economy is firmly on the oil needle. As always happens, when the old was destroyed, they did not think at all how it could be replaced. As a result, it turned out several decades, when the old gas disappeared, and before the appearance of the new (natural) one lived with kerosene lamps and wood-burning stoves. Actually, those who started such a combination were not concerned and worried to a lesser extent. And the existence of free power plants in the recent past was forgotten quite quickly. Several wars and revolutions, plus the illiteracy of the masses, did their job in several decades. In a fairly short period of time, both gas plants and domed free power plants were destroyed. The economy is firmly on the oil needle. As always happens, when the old was destroyed, they did not think at all how it could be replaced. As a result, it turned out several decades, when the old gas disappeared, and before the appearance of the new (natural) one lived with kerosene lamps and wood-burning stoves. Actually, those who started such a combination were not concerned and worried to a lesser extent. And the existence of free power plants in the recent past was forgotten quite quickly. Several wars and revolutions, plus the illiteracy of the masses, did their job in several decades. As a result, it turned out several decades, when the old gas disappeared, and before the appearance of the new (natural) one lived with kerosene lamps and wood-burning stoves. Actually, those who started such a combination were not concerned and worried to a lesser extent. And the existence of free power plants in the recent past was forgotten quite quickly. Several wars and revolutions, plus the illiteracy of the masses, did their job in several decades. As a result, it turned out several decades, when the old gas disappeared, and before the appearance of the new (natural) one lived with kerosene lamps and wood-burning stoves. Actually, those who started such a combination were not concerned and worried to a lesser extent. And the existence of free power plants in the recent past was forgotten quite quickly. Several wars and revolutions, plus the illiteracy of the masses, did their job in several decades.plus the illiteracy of the masses did their job in several decades.plus the illiteracy of the masses did their job in several decades.
With the advent of natural gas in widespread consumption, the only thing that changed is that instead of several small gas factories, a plant appeared on a national scale. This applies to all countries that have fairly large gas fields. Using the example of Russia, the activities of this state plant can be easily tracked in the media. What is really going on there, many know firsthand, probably, there is no point in citing links.
P. S. Sberbank analysts were clearly fired for a reason (probably, they heard this story). A few years will pass, and this Russian gas state plant will face the fate of the same plants, only a century ago. The fate of this state plant has clearly already been predetermined. I wonder what they will invent this time instead of him?
Author: tech_dancer