Gas holder

The volume of the container follows the quantity of stored gas, with pressure coming from the weight of a movable cap.

Antoine Lavoisier devised the first gas holder, which he called a gazomètre, to assist his work in pneumatic chemistry.

James Watt Junior collaborated with Thomas Beddoes in constructing the pneumatic apparatus, a short-lived piece of medical equipment that incorporated a gazomètre.

Many people experimented with coal distillation to produce a flammable gas, including Jean Tardin (1618), Clayton (1684), Jean-Pierre Minckelers, Leuven (1785) and Pickel (D)(1786).

He joined Boulton and Watt at the Soho manufactory in Birmingham in 1777, and in 1792 he built a retort to heat coal to produce the gas that illuminated his home and office in Redruth.

His system lacked a storage method until James Watt Junior adapted a Lavoisier gazomètre for this purpose.

[6] William Murdoch and his pupil Samuel Clegg went on to install retorts in individual factories and other workplaces.

[8] Because of safety concerns expressed by the Royal Society, the size of gas holders was limited to 6,000 cubic feet (170 m3) and they were enclosed in gasometer houses.

In the United States, however, where gas needed to be protected from much more extreme weather, gasometer houses continued to be built and were architecturally decorative.

The cup and dip (grip) seal was patented by Hutchinson in 1833, and the first working example was built in Leeds.

There are modern versions of the waterless gas holder, e.g. oil-sealed, grease-sealed and "dry seal" (membrane) types.

To guide the telescoping walls, or "lifts", they have an external frame, visible at a fixed height at all times.

A refinement was the guide frame gas holder, where the heavy columns were replaced by a lighter and more extensive framework.

[14] Cable-guided gas holders, invented by Pease in 1880, had a limited use, but were useful on unstable ground where the rigid systems could buckle and jam the lift.

The whole tank floats in a circular or annular water reservoir, held up by the roughly constant pressure of a varying volume of gas, the pressure determined by the weight of the structure, and the water providing the seal for the gas within the moving walls.

This was an additional inner tank that extended above the standards, when the infrastructure would support the extra shear forces and weight.

Gas holders have been a major part of the skylines of low-rise British cities for up to 200 years, due to their large distinctive shape and central location.

[21] London, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle, Salisbury, and Glasgow (which has the largest gasometers in the UK[22]) are noted for having many gas holders.

The gas holders behind King's Cross station in London were specially dismantled when the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link was being created,[23] with Gas holder No 8 being re-erected on a nearby site behind St Pancras station as part of a housing development.

[25] In the UK as well as other European countries, a movement to preserve classic gasometers has emerged in recent years, especially after Britain's National Grid announced in 2013 their plans to remove 76 gas holders, and soon afterwards, Southern and Scottish Gas networks announced that they would demolish 111 others.

The most recently used gasometer in the United States was on the southeast side of Indianapolis, but it has been demolished along with the adjoining Citizens Energy Group coke plant.

The demolition of two larger "Maspeth Tanks" in nearby Greenpoint, Brooklyn, was described by The New York Times at length.

[37] Gas holders also previously existed at Chico (demolished 1951),[38] Daly City,[39] Eureka,[40] Fresno,[41] Long Beach (1927-1997),[42] Los Angeles, including two within sight of City Hall[43] Merced,[44] Monterey,[45] Oakland,[46] Redding (gas holder demolished early 1960s),[47] Redwood City (gas holder built early 1900s, demolished 1959),[48] Salinas,[49] San Francisco Potrero Plant,[50] Santa Rosa,[51] St. Helena,[52] Stockton,[53] Vallejo,[54] Willows;[55] and likely existed at their other gasification plants in Colusa, Hollister, Lodi, Madera, Marysville, Modesto, Napa, Oakdale, Oroville, Red Bluff, Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, Selma, Tracy, Turlock, Watsonville and Woodland.

A good example of a largely intact gasometer is located at the Launceston Gasworks site in Tasmania.

In Sydney a beautiful ornate gasometer frame can be seen from the platform of the Macdonaldtown railway station which was built above the access tunnels of the adjoining gasworks site.

Only the frame remains, inside of which is a plaza used as a public recreation zone and for occasional special events such as markets or concerts.

Television coverage of Australian Rules football matches played at the famous ground showed the gas holder dominating the landscape.

It was built in 1948 by MAN, and it was used to store coke gas produced by a near factory named Usina Corrales.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s it was thought that gas holders could be replaced with high-pressure bullets (a cylindrical pressure vessel with hemispherical ends).

However, regulations brought in meant that all new bullets must be built several miles out of towns and cities, and the security of storing large amounts of high-pressure natural gas above ground made them unpopular with local people and councils.