Page 27 - Gi flipbook February 2018

signalled the end of H&G’s traditional around the generator and a waste
business and they moved into heat boiler before the blast stack,
offshore engineering. However, they which, between them, produced a
found it difficult to compete with the large proportion of the process steam.
bigger players. The company managed The great benefit of CWG and the
to hold out long enough to celebrate reason why the British gas industry
its centenary in 1982, but Ambrose embraced it so enthusiastically was its
Congreve retired the following year. flexibility. Unlike a bench of retorts, a
He retreated to the tranquillity of CWG plant could be started up and
his world famous gardens in County shut down at short notice to meet
Waterford and the business was fluctuations in gas demand and it was
acquired by the Ensearch Corporation also useful in controlling coke stocks.
of Dallas, Texas. Ensearch split the On the other hand, there was a limit
firm into separate offshore and to the proportion by which it could
onshore companies and sold them be added to coal gas, partly because
on. Humphreys & Glasgow published of its combustion characteristics and
its final report and accounts in 1988, partly for safety reasons, because of
from an address in Fleet Place, its high carbon monoxide content. The
London. When Congreve died in 2011, adoption of light petroleum distillate
at the age of 104, he left his estate for carburation in place of gas oil in
to the Irish nation on condition that it the 1950 and 1960s brought several
Humphrey’s and Glasgow, circa 1960 remain open to the public. benefits. Firstly, it was cheaper than
H&G, as it was familiarly known gas oil and, secondly, it could be
industry which was vital to the war in the gas industry, always excelled sprayed into the carburettor on the
effort and also took on government in the engineering of its plants and back-run, thereby permitting steam
engineering work. Congreve himself its whole history is one of reliability reforming in the generator, which
served in Air Intelligence and later in and continuous improvement. Early increased the output. Thirdly, back-
Bomber Command. CWG plants were manually operated run reforming improved the gas
After the nationalisation of the and labour intensive, both in the characteristics, permitting a higher
British gas industry in 1949, H&G rapid sequence of valve movements proportion of CWG in the final
continued to receive orders from the and in the attention required by the gas. Finally, there was much less
area gas boards and to promote its fuel bed. The introduction of the tar; tar distillers did not like a high
business overseas. In association with rotary self-clinkering grate and the concentration of water gas tar in their
the West Midlands Gas Board, the automatic fuel feed reduced the work deliveries because it caused emulsions
company developed an experimental on the generator to the occasional in their feedstock storage tanks.
regenerative oil gasification plant. sounding of the grate with a poker The Howdon Works of the
However, having been overtaken by from above. This increased the Northern Gas Board had two, 4.5
million standard cubic feet per day,
fully automatic CWG plants. One of
The reason why the British gas industry these plants, after consultation with
embraced it so enthusiastically was its H&G, was temporarily converted to
an emergency steam generator in
flexibility. Unlike a bench of retorts, a the summer of 1962 to permit the
installation of chain-grate stokers
CWG plant could be started up and shut on the works’ ancillary boilers. The
down at short notice to meet fluctuations generator was operated as a producer
and the carburettor and superheater
in gas demand and it was also useful in as combustion chambers to raise
controlling coke stocks steam in the waste heat boiler.
CWG plants, by their very nature,
suffered wear and tear and always
demanded more of a gas engineer’s
the naphtha reforming era, it never output of gas considerably, needing skill and attention than carbonising
went into commercial production. fewer stoppages. It also introduced plants, but it was always comforting
As the gas industry looked to hundreds of aspiring young gas to know that there was one on
cheaper methods of making gas, engineers to the mysteries of the standby when the holders began to
H&G diversified into petrochemical ‘peep and poke’. But the great leap dip on a winter’s afternoon. It was
plant and, in 1958, entered into a forward came with the introduction also reassuring to know that the
joint venture with the Power Gas of fully-automatic working, which backing and resources of a reliable
Corporation of Stockton-on-Tees to eliminated the onerous round of manufacturer were available in the
provide process plant for the nuclear manual valve operations every few event of serious problems. ■
power industry. minutes and facilitated better control.
In the 1970s, the conversion of A further valuable improvement was ■ This article first appeared in
Britain’s gas users to North Sea gas the incorporation of an annular boiler The Historic Gas Times

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