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Concept
Coal gas
Summary
Coal gas is a flammable gaseous fuel made from coal and supplied to the user via a piped distribution system. It is produced when coal is heated strongly in the absence of air. Town gas is a more general term referring to manufactured gaseous fuels produced for sale to consumers and municipalities.
The original coal gas was produced by the coal gasification reaction, and thus the burnable component consisted of mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen in roughly equal quantities by volume. Thus, coal gas is highly toxic. Other compositions contain additional calorific gases such as methane, produced by the Fischer-Tropsch process, and volatile hydrocarbons together with small quantities of non-calorific gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen.
Prior to the development of natural gas, supply and transmission—during the 1940s and 1950s in the United States and during the late 1960s and 1970s in the United Kingdom and Australia—almost all gas for fuel and lighting was manufactured from coal. Town gas was supplied to households via municipally owned piped distribution systems. Sometimes, this was called syn gas, in contrast to natural gas. At the time, a popular method for committing suicide was to turn on an oven without lighting the gas, open the oven door, and slide the top half of one's body in. The carbon monoxide would kill quickly. Sylvia Plath famously committed suicide that way.
Originally created as a by-product of the coking process, its use developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries tracking the industrial revolution and urbanization. By-products from the production process included coal tars and ammonia, which were important raw materials (or "chemical feedstock") for the dye and chemical industry with a wide range of artificial dyes being made from coal gas and coal tar. Facilities where the gas was produced were often known as a manufactured gas plant (MGP) or a gasworks.
Official source
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