Carbon monoxide in the old days ?

[Andre B.]

Relative to the CO part of this thread anyway.....

I'm surprised no one has mentioned (at least I didn't see it) the CO pumped into homes of the past as part of their cooking "natural gas". Remember people committing suicide by sticking their heads in the oven?

"Natural gas" for cooking used to be made by passing superheated steam over coal to yield CO.

That was more correctly know as "city gas" or "water gas" and was a man made mixture of mainly H2 and CO and CO2, "natural gas" is used as it comes from the ground with possibly a little cleaning and some of that stinky stuff added, and is mainly methane.

 

[smirnov3]

Relative to the CO part of this thread anyway.....

I'm surprised no one has mentioned (at least I didn't see it) the CO pumped into homes of the past as part of their cooking "natural gas". Remember people committing suicide by sticking their heads in the oven?

"Natural gas" for cooking used to be made by passing superheated steam over coal to yield CO.

That was more correctly know as "city gas" or "water gas" and was a man made mixture of mainly H2 and CO and CO2, "natural gas" is used as it comes from the ground with possibly a little cleaning and some of that stinky stuff added, and is mainly methane.

As opposed to 'Soylent gas', which is made from people

(ducks & runs for cover)

 

[fishboat]

....aaah yah...and the stinky stuff is more correctly known as a mercaptan


with regard to soylent gas from people...that too is methane...light a match and..well...nevermind.

 

[kevinmoelk]

Does anyone know of calcium carbide? I have a large jar of the powder in my garage, lol.

For those who may never of heard of calcium carbide, you simply place the powder in a container, add water, and where it vents you can light the resulting gas. It was used in old miners head lamps, home lighting, and welding. Ever heard of Union Carbide?

-Kevin

 

[Andre B.]

Does anyone know of calcium carbide? I have a large jar of the powder in my garage, lol.

For those who may never of heard of calcium carbide, you simply place the powder in a container, add water, and where it vents you can light the resulting gas. It was used in old miners head lamps, home lighting, and welding. Ever heard of Union Carbide?

-Kevin

Acetylene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetylene

One of those things that if had not come into widespread use before modern times you would never be able to legally buy it.

 

[berlin]

"That was more correctly know as “city gas” or “water gas” and was a man made mixture of mainly H2 and CO and CO2, “natural gas” is used as it comes from the ground with possibly a little cleaning and some of that stinky stuff added, and is mainly methane"

true, however, many areas of the us, usually where they manufacture coke, use higher btu nat. gas and blend it with coal gas. much of the gas in western ny area has a small amount of coal gas added; tonawanda coke as far as i know still sells much of thier gas to national fuel and other gas suppliers; although they now sell less of it, since the installation of a small generating station on site that burns it and they sell the electricity for more profit.

 

[Gooserider]

"That was more correctly know as “city gas” or “water gas” and was a man made mixture of mainly H2 and CO and CO2, “natural gas” is used as it comes from the ground with possibly a little cleaning and some of that stinky stuff added, and is mainly methane"

true, however, many areas of the us, usually where they manufacture coke, use higher btu nat. gas and blend it with coal gas. much of the gas in western ny area has a small amount of coal gas added; tonawanda coke as far as i know still sells much of thier gas to national fuel and other gas suppliers; although they now sell less of it, since the installation of a small generating station on site that burns it and they sell the electricity for more profit.

I'm not sure what the additional gasses are, but I know that when you look at a gas bill, they usually have a "Gas Adjustment Factor" that is supposed to be to account for the fact that there are more BTU's in a therm of what they send you than there would be in a therm of pure methane....

The "stink" in gas is Butyl Mercaptan, it is added by law in order to make gas leaks more obvious. Gas as it comes out of the processing plant is normally odorless, and they had several tragedies due to explosions caused by undetected leaks in the early days - allegedly the "trigger" for the laws requiring the addition of odorants was a school in Texas that killed most of the kids in a town there when it went up.

Suicide with gas is harder these days because of the requirement that gas valves be equipped with a thermocouple that gets hot before the main flow turns on. However even when "taking the pipe" was a popular "final exit strategy" the type of gas wasn't that critical, what did you in was suffocation due to oxygen deficiency - the gas going into the oven pushed the oxygen out so that there wasn't enough there to support life.

Gooserider