of carbon monoxide we are
still below the limit of danger, but a pure water gas with over 40 per
cent. of the same insidious element of danger will never be tolerated
in our households. Already a patent has been taken by Messrs. Crookes
and Ricarde-Seaver for purifying water gas from carbon monoxide, and
converting it mainly into hydrogen by passing it at a high temperature
through a mixture of lime and soda lime, a process which is chemically
perfect, as the most expensive portion of the material used could be
recovered; but in the present state of the labor market it is not
practical, as for the making of every 100,000 cubic feet of gas,
fifteen tons of material would have to be handled, the cost of labor
alone being sufficient to prevent its being adopted; moreover,
hydrogen can be made far cheaper directly.
From the earliest days of gas making, the manufacture of hydrogen by
the passage of steam over red-hot iron has been over and over again
mooted, and attempted on a large scale, but several factors have
combined to render it futile.
In the first place, for every 478.5 cubic feet of hydrogen made under
perfect theoretical conditions never likely to be obtained in
practice, 56 lb. of iron were converted into the magnetic oxide, and
as there was no ready sale for this article, this alone would prevent
its being used as a cheap source of hydrogen; the next point was that
when steam was passed over the red-hot iron, the temperature was so
rapidly lowered that the generation of gas could only go on for a very
short period, while, finally, the swelling of the mass in the retort
and fusion of some of the magnetic oxide into the side renders the
removal of the spent material almost an impossibility.
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