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Coal Gasification Processes
Published in A. Williams, M. Pourkashanian, J. M. Jones, N. Skorupska, Combustion and Gasification of Coal, 2018
A. Williams, M. Pourkashanian, J. M. Jones, N. Skorupska
The process of gasification has been used for many years. Partial gasification, the formation of volatile components from coal, was observed in the seventeenth century and subsequently used in a practical sense to produce coal gas (town’s gas) for gas lighting by Murdoch in 1797. This led to a major industry in many countries, the gas industry. However, complete gasification, in which the coke produced by the coal devolatilization step is also gasified, was not introduced until the mid-nineteenth century by Siemens and is widely used for industrial applications. Oxygen gasification was introduced in the mid-1920s as a means of producing a high-calorific-value town’s gas.
Main Building Systems Operating with Fuel Gas
Published in Alexander V. Dimitrov, Natural Gas Installations and Networks in Buildings, 2020
For now, two sources of light exist, i.e.: Light excited by electric current;Light excited by combustion of fuel gas, i.e. gas lighting fixtures.
Wind Energy Conversion Systems
Published in Radian Belu, Fundamentals and Source Characteristics of Renewable Energy Systems, 2019
Since ancient times, people have utilized wind energy to propel boats along the Nile River as early as 5000 BC or help Persians pump water and grind grain between 500 and 900 BC, by using windmills. Over the centuries, the use of windmills spread from Persia to the surrounding areas in the Middle East, where windmills were used extensively in food production or to pump water. Eventually, in the tenth century, wind power technology spread north to European countries such as the Netherlands, which adapted windmills to help drain lakes and marshes in the Rhine River Delta. The windmills built in Europe were of horizontal axis rotor type; they were made more efficient by using the lift force, in place of drag force as the Middle-eastern ones. Wind power being the first industrial type energy source in our history is used for navigation and generate mechanical power. Through history, the use of wind power has waxed and waned, being more evident in the last century and a half, when several remarkable technological advances have been made over this period of time. In the USA during the nineteenth century and until the 1930s of twentieth century, wind turbines were mainly used for irrigation and pumping water. They had a high number of steel-made blades, being a huge economic potential because over 8 million were built and operated during the nineteenth country. The world’s first wind turbine used to generate electricity was built by a Danish engineer, Poul la Cour, in 1891. It is interesting to note that La Cour used the electricity generated by his wind turbines to electrolyze water, producing hydrogen for gas lighting of the local schoolhouse. He was over 100 years ahead of his time since the twenty-first-century vision for renewable energy includes photovoltaic and wind energy conversion systems making hydrogen by electrolysis to generate electricity in fuel cells. Wind power systems convert wind kinetic energy into mechanical energy, and eventually electrical power is used for a variety of tasks. Whether the task is, the wind offers inexpensive, clean and reliable form of energy. First attempt to generate electricity was made at the end of nineteenth century and almost all those models had a horizontal axis. However, in the same time period (1931) Georges Jean Marie Darrieus designed one of the most famous and common types of the vertical axis wind turbine, which still bears his name. However, due to the use of cheap and abundant coal and oil in the last two centuries, and due to the technological advances in thermal engines, the importance of the wind energy decreased significantly. Over the last four decades there are significant increases into the research and applications of wind energy technologies.
Illuminating the streets, alleys, parks and suburbs of the American City: non-networked technologies, 1870-1920
Published in History and Technology, 2020
In the following decades Penn Globe installed gasoline and naphtha street lights in the cities of Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, Providence, St. Paul, St. Louis, and Worcester, as well as in hundreds of smaller cities and towns. (See Figure 4) In these locations Penn Globe competed against traditional coal gas lighting as well as electrical arc and incandescent lighting. In addition to Penn Globe, numerous other street light companies installed gasoline and naphtha lamps in cities throughout the nation using various patented devices.47