General Information About MGPs - NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation

 

We have reported that, as been known for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years, coal can be "reduced" by heat in a low-oxygen environment to produce both coke, for steel making and other uses, and, a flammable "coke oven gas". The gas in early days was most often vented and flared, but was sometimes collected, and piped into the steel furnaces for additional heating.

 

We have also reported on facilities in some major cities, Boston and Seattle, for instance, where coal was processed in "Gas Works", which were essentially just large coke ovens, and the gas produced from the coal, the coke oven gas, was then distributed for residential and industrial heating and lighting use as "town" or "producer" gas.

 

Coke oven gas was also known as "manufactured gas", and, as it happens, it's use was very widespread. It was made commercially in Manufactured Gas Plants, "MGP's".

 

Herein an excerpt from the enclosed link to New York State's Department of Environmental Conservation, with some commentary following:

"General Information About MGPs

What's an MGP?

MGP is an abbreviation for Manufactured Gas Plant. A manufactured gas plant was an industrial facility at which gas was produced from coal, oil and other feedstocks. The gas was stored, and then piped to the surrounding area, where it was used for lighting, cooking, and heating homes and businesses. The first MGPs in New York were constructed in the early 1800s, prior to the Civil War. Most were closed during the early-to-middle 1900s, and the last one ceased operations in 1972.

Gas from MGPs was used for all the same purposes that natural gas is used for today. In addition, in the late 1800s, gas was used for lighting prior to the introduction of electricity.

When and Where Did MGPs Operate?

For a period of over 100 years, manufactured gas plants (MGPs) were an important part of life in cities and towns throughout New York State and the United States as a whole. They had their beginnings in the early 1800s, providing small amounts of gas for street lighting systems. By 1900, production had greatly increased, and gas was being widely used for heating and cooking. Most towns in New York with populations of over 5000 had at least one gas plant, and larger towns often had more than one. New York City had several dozen.

Small-town facilities began to close in the 1920s and 1930s as the industry consolidated production at larger facilities and connected smaller systems together with new pipeline networks. As World War II approached, interstate pipelines were built, making natural gas from the Midwest more widely available, and cheaper than manufactured gas. Most New York State MGPs closed by 1950, but a few remained in operation in remote areas, or on standby status in areas where the interstate pipelines could not meet peak demand. The last MGP in New York State ceased operations in 1972.

How Was the Gas Produced?

Two main processes were used to produce the gas. The older and simpler process was coal carbonization. In this process, coal was heated in closed retorts or beehive ovens. Inside these ovens, the coal was kept from burning by limiting its contact with outside air. Volatile constituents of the coal would be driven off as a gas, which was collected, cooled, and purified prior to being piped into the surrounding areas for use. The solid portion of the coal would become a black, granular material called coke. Coke was a valuable fuel for many industrial uses and for home heating, because it burned hotter and more cleanly than ordinary coal. Sometimes, the coke was the primary product, and the gas was a by-product, and the facility was called a coke plant."

Mike, another synonym for Manufactured Gas is, of course, as you be able to guess from all our earlier dispatches, Syngas; so named because, once it's produced, it can be catalyzed and condensed, synthesized, into more complex hydrocarbons - liquid fuels and organic chemical manufacturing raw materials.

Moreover, coke itself is not, given the changes in the steel industry, the valuable commodity it once was. But, once you have it, you can liquefy and reform it with steam or supercritical water or hydrogen-donor catalysts, and get - liquid fuels and organic chemical manufacturing raw materials.

The contaminants New York is concerned with in this report should not be a concern of modern Manufactured Gas Plants. They consist primarily of coal tars and could themselves be collected and converted, by steam reforming or hydrogen-donor catalysis into - liquid fuels and organic chemical manufacturing raw materials.

We'll document further, in some future dispatches, the breadth of public knowledge that once existed in the US about coal-based syngas, as it was produced and used under it's various synonyms. But, one thing is clear: The knowledge and technologies required to convert our coal into more versatile liquid and gaseous fuels has been around for a very long time.

We could have been free of gas station lines, oil embargoes, unemployment, some foreign wars, and oil cartel and oil company extortion long ago. There can be no good reason why we're not employing coal conversion technology on a broad scale to break the economic chains with which foreign petroleum powers hold us in subservient, royalty-paying bondage.