Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/359

Rh gas. The odor of acetylene is unpleasant; so is the odor of the water gas used generally in the United States, and the acetylene can be cheaply deodorized.

As the generator system, then, is the general one, the most important question to the consumer is what generator to buy, and it is a perplexing question. The carbide manufacture is so organized that it is everywhere under the control of powerful and responsible companies which sell a guaranteed product. The burners now in use are nearly all good. With generators it is different; the market is flooded with them at all prices, ranging in value from worse than useless to very good, as regards safety, economy, and quality of light. As the generator question is by far the most important and the least understood in the whole acetylene industry, it will be well to give a full account of the results of the experiments which have been made within the last two years on this question. The most exhaustive experiments are those of the English expert, Professor Lewes, and his results agree with those of other observers.

Lewes first determined the amount of heat developed by the decomposition of carbide by water, and the conditions which tend to lessen or increase the intensity of the reaction. The average result of the experiments as to the amount of heat was 446.6 calories for pure carbide, and a little less for commercial carbide (to state this differently, one pound of carbide, when decomposed by water, gives off heat enough to raise the temperature of 446.6 pounds of water 1° C, or to raise the temperature of one pound of water 446.6° C). As the intensity of the heat developed determines the highest temperature attained during the decomposition, and is a function of the time needed to complete the action, and as the decomposition of carbide in contact with water is extremely rapid, it is evident that the temperature developed may be so high as to cause disaster. All the generators at present before the public may be classified under three heads: 1. Those in which water is allowed to drip or flow slowly on a mass of carbide, the evolution of the gas being regulated by the stopping of the water. 2. Those in which water in considerable volume is allowed to rise in contact with carbide, the evolution of the gas being regulated by the driving back of the water by the increase of pressure in the generating chamber. 3. Those in which the carbide is dropped or plunged into an excess of water.

The conclusions deduced from a large number of experiments were that when, as in type 1, water is allowed to drip or flow in a fine stream upon a mass of carbide, the temperature rapidly rises until after eighteen to twenty-five minutes the maximum is reached, which varies from 400° to 700° C. (720° to 1120° Fahrenheit), and it is probable that in some of the mass the higher limit is always reached,