Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/231

Rh committee of the Engineers' Society of Western Pennsylvania, and for the use of which I am indebted to that association:

Natural gas is now conveyed to Pittsburg through four lines of 5$5/8$-inch pipe, and one line of eight-inch pipe. A line of ten-inch pipe is also being laid. The pressure of the gas at the wells is from 150 to 230 pounds to the square inch. As the wells are on one side eighteen and on the other about twenty-five miles distant, and as the consumption is variable, the pressure at the city can not be given. Greater pressure might be obtained at the wells, but this would increase the liability to leakage and bursting of pipes. For the prevention of such casualties safety-valves are provided at the wells, permitting the escape of all superfluous gas. The enormous force of this gas may be appreciated from a comparison of, say, 200 pounds pressure at the wells with a two-ounce pressure of common gas for ordinary lighting. The amount of natural gas now furnished for use in Pittsburg is supposed to be something like 25,000,000 cubic feet per day; the ten-inch pipe now laying is estimated to increase the supply to 40,000,000 feet. The amount of manufactured gas used for lighting the same city probably falls below 3,000,000 feet. About fifty mills and factories of various kinds in Pittsburg now use natural gas. It is used for domestic purposes in two hundred houses. Its superiority over coal in the manufacture of window-glass is unquestioned. That it is not used in all the glass-houses of Pittsburg is due to the fact that its advantages were not fully known when the furnaces were fired last summer, and it costs a large sum to permit the furnaces to cool off after being heated for melting. When the fires cool down, and before they are started up again, the furnaces now using coal will doubtless all be changed so as to admit natural gas. The superiority of French over American glass is said to be due to the fact that the French use wood and the Americans coal in their furnaces, wood being free from sulphur, phosphorus, etc. The substitution of gas for coal, while not increasing the cost, improves the quality of American glass, making it as nearly perfect as possible.

While the gas is not used as yet in any smelting-furnace nor in the Bessemer converters, it is preferred in open-hearth and crucible steel furnaces, and is said to be vastly superior to coal for puddling.