Page 5 - Demo

page5Historic Gas Times%u2022 Issue 111 %u2022 June 2022 %u2022With moist eyes I have recently been absorbed by Laura Fisher%u2019s marvellous photobook of gasholders - Decommissioned - whilst recalling the times in my life when, whether working as a shift engineer on a steam/hydrocarbon reforming plant or in grid control, I was responsible for ensuring that the right amount of gas was stored in these massive metal giants.I always felt in awe of the mighty but understated power of gas holders. Particularly the spiral guided type which would rise and fall, without visible support, as though they had a mind of their own - and on night shifts I would tour the outer reaches of my gas works site listening to their soothing metallic groans. Although I recall one occasion when, as a recently appointed shift engineer, my tranquillity was interrupted by my operators reporting, at around 2 am, that they had managed to pull a normally convex holder crown into something closer to concave.My gas works in Leeds had recently commissioned four HTR cyclic gas making plants, to supplement its six streams of reformers and was using a small, old, column guided holder as a buffer holder to receive the HTR gas before it was exhausted into the huge works holders. During the night the HTR plant had suddenly and automatically shut itself down to a safe condition and so gas had stopped flowing into the buffer holder. Unfortunately, the plant operators had failed to shut off the exhauster quickly, the holder had %u201cgrounded%u201d and the exhauster had then done its best to pull the crown down with associated shrieks of bending and tearing metal.When the HTR plant had been restarted and gas had started flowing back into the holder it had regained its normal shape but with gas now escaping from a split in the crown. Of course, this would not have been the first time such an incident had occurred in the history of gas holders, but it was an unfortunate first for me. The standard temporary repair was to apply sacking and clay to caulk the split, prior to a permanent repair and I still remember with gratitude the name of the young mechanic who, having been called from his bed, had to clamber onto the holder crown in the middle of the night with gas pouring out of the split to effect the repair - and all without any of the equipment that Health & Safety might demand today.But the leak was temporarily sealed, customers continued to be supplied with gas and eventually the complete holder crown was replaced. An expensive outcome for a simple failure to quickly shut down an exhauster - and an early lesson to this raw appointee that when things go wrong in the middle of the night, they really do go badly wrong.Graham BreezeTHE MOVEMENT OF METAL IN THE NIGHTGeorge Walcott was a prominent Gas Engineer in his time, based for much of his career from No.24 Abchurch Lane, in the City of London. He was innovative filing at least two patents for improvements in gas making throughout his career, ranging from his patent of %u201cAn Improved Receptacle or Receptacles for Generating Gas%u201d from 1860 and his patent for %u201cWalcott%u2019s Patent Retort Bed%u201d in 1861. This latter patent was for an improved furnace to heat the retorts, it is shown in the attached sketch was taken was reasonably successful, as he had managed to license the design to George Bower of St. Neots, a name mentioned later in this article.During the 1850s, Walcott was active in North Wales, designing many small and some medium sized works and the supervising their construction. Whilst working in north Wales, Walcott was based at the British Hotel in Bangor, one of the places that he supervised the construction of a gasworks to light the hotel. He advertised the services he provided as %u201cGasworks erected, altered, valued or leased%u201d. He was the superintendent for the construction of gasworks at the George Hotel in Bangor, Holyhead, Beaumaris, Llandudno, Pwllheli, Portmadoc and Llanidloes. According to his advert of 1858, he claimed to have erected twenty gasworks in the past four years, at which time he was building the Beaumaris gasworks. It appears he may have run into difficulties at Beaumaris, as he was advertising a gasworks for sale from Beaumaris, which was too small for the intended house as a gasworks four times the size was required. The Gasworks had worked satisfactorily, GEORGE WALCOTT - GAS ENGINEER