Science: Gifts of Gas

Last week’s convention of the American Gas Association at Atlantic City, brought forth new gifts which gasmen have learned to wring from their favorite commodity, or which are under way. Gas-Cold. The Consolidated Gas Co. of New York declared that January would behold quantity production of a “foolproof,” silent refrigerator without any moving parts,* in which a liquid is kept circulating by a gas flame. At one point in its circuit, the liquid absorbs heat, producing cold. Housewives could see themselves “lighting the ice-box.”

Gas-Hot. “No home,” declared President Harry C. Abell of the Association, “has ever been heated efficiently with coal. It is either hot, cold or indifferent.” He predicted universal household heating by thermostat-regulated furnaces whose pilot lights would only need to be lighted in the autumn, turned off in spring.

Gas-Sulphur. The Pacific Gas and Electric Co. of San Francisco reported having recovered from manufactured gas thousands of tons of a sulphur compound valuable to agriculture as an insecticide and fertilizer. There is much sulphur in gas coke, the smelly compounds of which are removed from gas made for household burning. Hitherto these compounds have been wasted upon the air of the gashouse district.

*Early types of artificial refrigerators and ice-making machines employed electric vacuum pumps, cooling by diminished pressure. Last week, at Danbury, Conn., two persons were asphyxiated by methyl chlorine escaping from an artificial refrigerator.