By GEORGE WARDMAN.
The practical application of natural gas, as an article of fuel, to the
purpose of manufacturing glass, iron, and steel, promises to work a
revolution in the industrial interests of America--promises to work a
revolution; for notwithstanding the fact that, in many of the largest
iron, steel, and glass factories in Pittsburg and its vicinity, natural
gas has already been substituted for coal, the managers of some such
works are shy of the new fuel, mainly for two reasons: 1. They doubt
the continuity and regularity of its supply. 2. They do not deem the
difference between the price of natural gas and coal sufficient as yet
to justify the expenditure involved in the furnace changes necessary to
the substitution of the one for the other. These two objections will
doubtless disappear with additional experience in the production and
regulation of the gas supply, and with enlarged competition among the
companies engaging in its transmission from the wells to the works.
At present the use of natural gas as a substitute for coal in the
manufacture of glass, iron, and steel is in its infancy.
Natural gas is as ancient as the universe. It was known to man in
prehistoric times, we must suppose, for the very earliest historical
reference to the Magi of Asia records them as worshiping the eternal
fires which then blazed, and still blaze, in the fissures of the
mountain heights overlooking the Caspian Sea. Those records appertain
to a period at least 600 years before the birth of Christ; but the Magi
must have lived and worshiped long anterior to that time.
Zoroaster, reputed founder of the Parsee sect, is placed contemporary
with the prophet Daniel, from 2,500 to 600 B.C.; and, although Daniel
has been doubted, and Zoroaster may never have seen the light, the
fissures of the Caucasus have been flaming since the earliest authentic
records.
The Parsees (Persians) did not originally worship fire. They believed
in two great powers--the Spirit of Light, or Good, and the Spirit of
Darkness, or Evil. Subsequent to Zoroaster, when the Persian empire rose
to its greatest power and importance, overspreading the west to the
shores of the Caspian and beyond, the tribes of the Caucasus suffered
political subjugation; but the creed of the Magi, founded upon the
eternal flame-altars of the mountains, proved sufficiently vigorous to
transform the Parseeism of the conquerors to the fire worship of the
conquered.
About the beginning of the seventh century of the Christian era, the
Grecian Emperor Heraclius overturned the fire altars of the Magi at
Baku, the chief city on the Caspian, but the fire worshipers were not
expelled from the Caucasus until the Mohammedans subjugated the Persian
Empire, when they were driven into the Rangoon, on the Irrawaddy, in
India, one of the most noted petroleum producing districts of the world.
Petroleum and natural gas are so intimately related that one would
hardly dare to say whether the gas proceeds from petroleum or the
petroleum is deposited from the gas. It is, however, safe to assume that
they are the products of one material, the lighter element separating
from the heavier under certain degrees of temperature and pressure.
Thus petroleum may separate from the gas as asphaltum separates from
petroleum. But some speculative minds consider natural gas to be a
product of anthracite coal. The fact that the great supply-field of
natural gas in Western Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, and
Eastern Ohio is a bituminous and not an anthracite region does not of
itself confute that theory, as the argument for it is, that the gas may
be tapped at a remote distance from the source of supply; and, whereas
anthracite is not a gas-coal, while bituminous is, we are told to
suppose that the gas which once may have been a component part of the
anthracite was long ago expelled by Nature, and has since been held in
vast reservoirs with slight waste, awaiting the use of man. That is one
theory; and upon that supposition it is suggested that anthracite
may exist below the bituminous beds of the region lying between the
Alleghany Mountains and the Great Lakes. Another theory is, that natural
gas is a product of the sea-weed deposited in the Devonian stratum. But,
leaving modern theories on the origin of natural gas and petroleum, we
may suppose the natural gas jets now burning in the fissures of the
Caucasus to have started up in flames about the time when, according
to the Old Testament, Noah descended from Mount Ararat, or very soon
thereafter. In the language of modern science it would be safe to say
that those flames sprang up when the Caucasus range was raised from
beneath the surface of the universal sea. The believer in biblical
chronology may say that those fires have been burning for four thousand
years--the geologist may say for four millions.
We know that Alexander the Great penetrated to the Caspian; and in
Plutarch we read: "Hence [Arbela] he marched through the province
Babylon [Media?], which immediately submitted to him, and in Ecbatana
[?] was much surprised at the sight of the place where fire issues in a
continuous stream, like a spring of water, out of a cleft in the earth,
and the stream of naphtha, which not far from this spot flows out so
abundantly as to form a large lake. This naphtha, in other respects
resembling bitumen, is so subject to take fire that, before it touches
the flame, it will kindle at the very light that surrounds it, and often
inflames the intermediate air also. The barbarians, to show the power
and nature of it, sprinkled the street that led to the king's lodgings
with little drops of it, and, when it was almost night, stood at the
farther end with torches, which being applied to the moistened places,
the first taking fire, instantly, as quick as a man could think of it,
it caught from one end to another in such manner that the whole street
was one continued flame. Among those who used to wait upon the king, and
find occasion to amuse him, when he anointed and washed himself, there
was one Athenophanus, an Athenian, who desired him to make an experiment
of the naphtha upon Stephanus, who stood by in the bathing place, a
youth with a ridiculously ugly face, whose talent was singing well.
'For,' said he, 'if it take hold of him, and is not put out, it must
undeniably be allowed to be of the most invincible strength.' The youth,
as it happened, readily consented to undergo the trial, and as soon as
he was anointed and rubbed with it, his whole body was broke out into
such a flame, and was so seized by the fire, that Alexander was in the
greatest perplexity and alarm for him, and not without reason; for
nothing could have prevented him from being consumed by it if, by good
chance, there had not been people at hand with a great many vessels of
water for the service of the bath, with all which they had much ado to
extinguish the fire; and his body was so burned all over that he was
not cured of it a good while after. And thus it was not without some
plausibility that they endeavor to reconcile the fable to truth, who say
this was the drug in the tragedies with which Medea anointed the crown
and veils which she gave to Creon's daughter."
An interesting reference to the fire-worshipers of the Caucasus is
contained in the "History of Zobeide," a tale of the wonderful Arabian
Nights Entertainment. It runs thus:
"I bought a ship at Balsora, and freighted it; my sisters chose to go
with me, and we set sail with a fair wind. Some weeks after, we cast
anchor in a harbor which presented itself, with intent to water the
ship. As I was tired with having been so long on board, I landed with
the first boat, and walked up into the country. I soon came in sight of
a great town. When I arrived there, I was much surprised to see vast
numbers of people in different postures, but all immovable. The
merchants were in their shops, the soldiery on guard; every one seemed
engaged in his proper avocation, yet all were become as stone.... I
heard the voice of a man reading Al Koran.... Being curious to know why
he was the only living creature in the town,... he proceeded to tell
me that the city was the metropolis of a kingdom now governed by his
father; that the former king and all his subjects were Magi, worshipers
of fire and of Nardoun. the ancient king of the giants who rebelled
against God. 'Though I was born,' continued he, 'of idolatrous parents,
it was my good fortune to have a woman governess who was a strict
observer of the Mohammedan religion. She taught me Arabic from Al Koran;
by her I was instructed in the true religion, which I would never
afterward renounce. About three years ago a thundering voice was heard
distinctly throughout the city, saying, "Inhabitants, abandon the
worship of Nardoun and of fire, and worship the only true God, who
showeth mercy!" This voice was heard three years successively, but no
one regarded it. At the end of the last year all the inhabitants were in
an instant turned to stone. I alone was preserved.'"
In the foregoing tale we doubtless have reference to the destruction
of Baku, on the Caspian (though to sail from Balsora to Baku is
impossible), and the driving away into India, by the Arabs under Caliph
Omar, of all who refused to renounce fire-worship and adopt the creed
of the Koran. The turning of the refractory inhabitants into stone is
probably the Arabian storyteller's figurative manner of referring to the
finding of dead bodies in a mummified condition.
It is known that the Egyptians made use of bitumen, in some form, in
the preservation of their dead, a fact with which the Arabians were
familiar. As the Magi held the four elements of earth, air, fire, and
water to be sacred, they feared to either bury, burn, sink, or expose
to air the corrupting bodies of their deceased. Therefore, it was their
practice to envelop the corpse in a coating of wax or bitumen, so as
to hermetically seal it from immediate contact with either of the four
sacred elements. Hence the idea of all the bodies of the Magi left at
Baku being turned to stone, while only the true believer in Mohammed
remained in the flesh.
Marco Polo, the famous traveler of the thirteenth century, makes
reference to the burning jets of the Caucasus, and those fires are known
to the Russians as continuing in existence since the army of Peter the
Great wrested the regions about the Caspian from the modern Persians.
The record of those flaming jets of natural gas is thus brought down in
an unbroken chain of evidence from remote antiquity to the present day,
and they are still burning.
Numerous Greek and Latin writers testify to the known existence of
petroleum about the shores of the Mediterranean two thousand years ago.
More modern citations may, however, be read with equal interest. In the
"Journal of Sir Philip Skippon's Travels in France," in 1663, we find
the following curious entries:
"We stayed in Grenoble till August 1st, and one day rode out, and, after
twice fording the river Drac (which makes a great wash) at a league's
distance, went over to Pont de Clef, a large arch across that river,
where we paid one sol a man; a league further we passed through a large
village called Vif, and about a league thence by S. Bathomew, another
village, and Chasteau Bernard, where we saw a flame breaking out of the
side of a bank, which is vulgarly called La Fountaine qui Brule; it
is by a small rivulet, and sometimes breaks out in other places; just
before our coming some other strangers had fried eggs here. The soil
hereabouts is full of a black stone, like our coal, which, perhaps, is
the continual fuel of the fire.... Near Peroul, about a league from
Montpelier, we saw a boiling fountain (as they call it), that is, the
water did heave up and bubble as if it boiled. This phenomenon in the
water was caused by a vapor ascending out of the earth through the
water, as was manifest, for if that one did but dig anywhere near the
place, and pour water upon the place new digged, one should observe in
it the like bubbling, the vapor arising not only in that place where the
fountain was, but all thereabout; the like vapor ascending out of the
earth and causing such ebullition in water it passes through hath been
observed in Mr. Hawkley's ground, about a mile from the town of Wigan,
in Lancashire, which vapor, by the application of a lighted candle,
paper; or the like, catches fire and flames vigorously. Whether or not
this vapor at Peroul would in like manner catch fire and burn I cannot
say, it coming not in our minds to make the experiment.... At Gabian,
about a day's journey from Montpelier, in the way to Beziers, is a
fountain of petroleum. It burns like oil, is of a pungent scent, and a
blackish color. It distills out of several places of the rock all the
year long, but most in the summer time. They gather it up with ladles
and put it in a barrel set on end, which hath a spigot just at the
bottom. When they have put in a good quantity, they open the spigot to
let out the water, and when the oil begins to come presently stop it.
They pay for the farm of this fountain about fifty crowns per annum.
We were told by one Monsieur Beaushoste, a chymist in Montpelier, that
petroleum was the very same with oil of jet, and not to be distinguished
from it by color, taste, smell, consistency, virtues, or any other
accident, as he had by experience found upon the coast of the
Mediterranean Sea, in several places, as at Berre, near Martague, in
Provence; at Messina, in Sicily, etc."
In Harris' "Voyages," published in 1764, an article on the empire of
Persia thus refers to petroleum:
"In several parts of Persia we meet with naphtha, both white and black;
it is used in painting and varnish, and sometimes in physic, and there
is an oil extracted from it which is applied to several uses. The most
famous springs of naphtha are in the neighborhood of Baku, which furnish
vast quantities, and there are also upward of thirty springs about
Shamasky, both in the province of Schirwan. The Persians use it as oil
for their lamps and in making fireworks, of which they are extremely
fond, and in which they are great proficients."
Petroleum has long been known to exist also in the northern part of
Italy, the cities of Parma and Genoa having been for many years lighted
with it.
In the province of Szechuen, China, natural gas is obtained from beds of
rock-salt at a depth of fifteen to sixteen hundred feet. Being brought
to the surface, it is conveyed in bamboo tubes and used for lighting as
well as for evaporating water in the manufacture of salt. It is asserted
that the Chinese used this natural gas for illuminating purposes
long before gas-lighting was known to the Europeans. Remembering the
unprogressive character of Chinese arts and industries, there is ground
for the belief that they may have been using this natural gas as an
illuminant these hundreds of years.
In the United States the existence of petroleum was known to the Pilgrim
Fathers, who doubtless obtained their first information of it from the
Indians, from whom, in New York and western Pennsylvania, it was called
Seneka oil. It was otherwise known as "British" oil and oil of naphtha,
and was considered "a sovereign remedy for an inward bruise."
The record of natural gas in this country is not so complete as that of
petroleum, but we learn that an important gas spring was known in West
Bloomfleld, N.Y., seventy years ago. In 1864 a well was sunk to a depth
of three hundred feet upon that vein, from which a sufficient supply
of gas was obtained to illuminate and heat the city of Rochester
(twenty-five miles distant), it was supposed. But the pipes which were
laid for that purpose, being of wood, were unfitted to withstand the
pressure, in consequence of which the scheme was abandoned; but gas from
that well is now in use as an illuminant and as fuel both in the town of
West Bloomfield and at Honeoye Falls. The village of Fredonia, N.Y., has
been using natural gas in lighting the streets for thirty years or there
about. On Big Sewickley Creek, in Westmoreland County, Pa., natural gas
was used for evaporating water in the manufacture of salt thirty years
ago, and gas is still issuing at the same place. Natural gas has been in
use in several localities in eastern Ohio for twenty-five years, and the
wells are flowing as vigorously as when first known. It has also been
in use in West Virginia for a quarter of a century, as well as in
the petroleum region of western Pennsylvania, where it has long been
utilized in generating steam for drilling oil wells.
In 1826 the _American Journal of Science_ contained a letter from Dr.
S.P. Hildreth, who, in writing of the products of the Muskingum (Ohio)
Valley, said: "They have sunk two wells, which are now more than four
hundred feet in depth; one of them affords a very strong and pure
salt water, but not in great quantity; the other discharges such vast
quantities of petroleum, or, as it is vulgarly called, 'Seneka oil,' and
besides is so subject to such tremendous explosions of gas, as to force
out all the water and afford nothing but gas for several days, that they
make little or no salt."
The value of the foregoing references is to be found in the testimony
they offer as to the duration of the supply of natural gas. Whether we
look to the eternal flaming fissures of the Caucasus, or to New York,
Pennsylvania, and Ohio, there is much to encourage the belief that the
flow of natural gas may be, like the production of petroleum, increased
rather than diminished by the draughts made upon it. Petroleum, instead
of diminishing in quantity by the millions of barrels drawn from western
Pennsylvania in the last quarter of a century, seems to increase,
greater wells being known in 1884 than in any previous year, and prices
having fallen from two dollars per bottle for "Seneka oil" to sixty
cents per barrel for the same article under the name of crude petroleum.
Hence we may assume that, as new pipe-lines are laid, the supply of
natural gas available for use in the great manufacturing district of
Pittsburg and vicinity will be increased, and the price of this fuel
diminished in a corresponding ratio.
Natural gas is now supplied in Pittsburg at a small discount on
the actual cost of coal used last year in the large manufacturing
establishments, an additional saving being made in dispensing with
firemen and avoidance of hauling ashes from the boiler-room. It is
supplied, for domestic purposes, at twenty cents per thousand cubic
feet, which is not cheaper than coal in Pittsburg, but it is a thousand
per cent cleaner, and in that respect it promises to prove a great
blessing, not only to those who can afford to use it, but to the
community at large, in the hope held out that the smoke and soot
nuisance may be abated in part, if not wholly subdued, and that gleams
of sunshine there may become less phenomenal in the future than they are
at the present time. Twenty cents per thousand feet is too high a price
to bring gas into general use for domestic purposes in a city where
coal is cheap. Ten cents would be too much, and no doubt five cents per
thousand would pay a profit. The fact is, the dealers in natural gas
appear to be somewhat doubtful of the continuity of supply, and
anxious to get back the cost of wells and pipes in one year, which, if
successful, would be an enormous return on the investment.
There are objections to the use of natural gas by mill operators--that
it costs too much, and that the continuity of the supply is uncertain;
by heads of families, that it is odorless, and, in case of leakage from
the pipes, may fill a room and be ready to explode without giving the
fragrant warning offered by common gas. Both of these objections will
probably disappear under the experience that time must furnish. More
wells and tributary lines will lessen the cost and tend to regulate the
pressure for manufacturers. Cut-offs and escape pipes outside of the
house will reduce the risk of explosions within. The danger in the
house may also be lessened by providing healthful ventilation in all
apartments wherein gas shall be consumed.
This subject of, the ventilation of rooms in which common gas is
ordinarily used is beginning to attract attention. It is stated, upon
scientific authority, that a jet of common gas, equivalent to twelve
sperm candles, consumes 5.45 cubic feet of oxygen per hour, producing
3.21 feet of carbonic acid gas, vitiating, according to Dr. Tidy's
"Handbook of Chemistry," 348.25 cubic feet of air. In every five cubic
feet of pure air in a room there is one cubic foot of oxygen and four
of nitrogen. Without oxygen human life, as well as light, would become
extinct. It is asserted that one common gas-jet consumes as much oxygen
as five persons.
Carbonic acid gas is the element which, in deep mines and vaults, causes
almost instant insensibility and suffocation to persons subjected to its
influences, and instantly extinguishes the flame of any light lowered
into it. The normal quantity of this gas contained in the air we breathe
is 0.04; one per cent, of it causes distress in breathing; two per cent,
is dangerous; four per cent, extinguishes life, and four per cent of it
is contained in air expelled from the lungs. According to Dr. Tidy's
table, each ordinary jet of common gas contributes to the air of a room
sixteen by ten feet on the sides and nine feet high, containing 1,440
cubic feet of air, twenty-two per cent, of carbonic acid gas, which,
continued for twenty-four hours without ventilation, would reach the
fatal four per cent.
Prof. Huxley gives, as a result of chemical analyses, the following
table of ratio of carbonic-acid gas in the atmosphere at the points
named:
On the Thames, at London 0.0343
In the streets of London 0.0380
Top of Ben Nevis 0.0327
Dress circle of Haymarket theater (11:30 P.M.) 0.0757
Chancery Court (seven feet from the ground) 0.1930
From working mines (average of 339 samples) 0.7853
Largest amount in a Cornish mine 2.0500
In addition to the consumption of oxygen and production of carbonic acid
by the use of common gas, the gas itself, owing to defectiveness of the
burner, is projected into the air. Now, considering the deleterious
nature of all illuminating gases, the reasons for perfect ventilation of
rooms in which natural gas is used for heating and culinary purposes are
self-evident, not alone as a protection against explosions, but for the
health of the occupants of the house, remembering that a larger supply
of oxygen is said to be necessary for the perfect combustion of natural
than of common gas.
Carbonic oxide, formed by the consumption of carbon, with an
insufficient supply of air, is the fatal poison of the charcoal furnace,
not infrequently resorted to, in close rooms, as a means of suicide.
The less sufficient the air toward perfect combustion, the smaller the
quantity of carbonic acid and the greater the amount of carbonic oxide.
That is to say, at the time of ignition the chief product of combustion
is carbonic oxide, and, unless sufficient air be added to convert the
oxide to carbonic acid, a decidedly dangerous product is given off into
the room. Yet, by means of a flue to carry off the poisonous gases from
burning jets, the combustion of gas, creating a current, is made an aid
to ventilation. Unfortunately, this important fact, if commonly known,
is not much heeded by heads of families or builders of houses. But in
any large community where gas comes into general use as an article of
fuel, this fact will gradually become recognized and respected.
The property of indicating the presence of very minute quantities of gas
in a room is claimed for an instrument recently described by C. Von Jahn
in the _Revue Industrielle_. This is a porous cup, inverted and closed
by a perforated rubber stopper. Through the perforation in the stopper
the interior of the cup is connected with a pressure gauge containing
colored water. It is claimed that the diffusion of gas through the
earthenware raises the level of the water in the gauge so delicately
that the presence of one-half of one per cent, of gas may be detected by
it. Other instruments of a slightly different character are credited by
their inventors with most sensitive power of indicating gas-leakages,
but their practical efficiency remains to be demonstrated. An automatic
cut-off for use outside of houses in which natural gas is consumed has
been invented, but this writer knows nothing of either its mode of
action or its effectiveness.
The great economic question, however, connected with the use of natural
gas is, how will it affect the industrial interests of the country?
There are grounds for the belief that a sufficient supply of natural gas
may be found in the vicinity of Pittsburg to reduce the cost of fuel to
such a degree as to make competition in the manufacture of iron, steel,
and glass, in any part of the country where coal must be used, out of
the question. Such a condition of affairs would probably result in
driving the great manufacturing concerns of the country into the region
where natural gas is to obtained. That may be anywhere from the western
slope of the Alleghanies to Lake Erie or to Lake Michigan. And, if the
cost of producing iron, steel, and glass can be so cheapened by the new
fuel, the tariff question may undergo some important modification in
politics. For, if the reduction in the cost of fuel should ever become
an offset to the lower rate of wages in Europe, the manufacturers of
Pennsylvania, who have long been the chief support of the protective
policy of the country, may lose their present interest in that question,
and leave the tariff to shift for itself elsewhere. It should be
remembered that natural gas is not, as yet, much cheaper than coal
in Pittsburg. But it may safely be assumed that it will cheapen, as
petroleum has done, by a development of the territory in which it is
known to exist in enormous quantities. It is quite possible that,
instead of buying gas, many factories will bore for it with success,
or remove convenient to its natural sources, so that a gas well may
ultimately become an essential part of the "plant" of a mill or factory.
Even now coal cannot compete with gas in the manufacture of window
glass, for, the gas being free from sulphur and other impurities
contained in coal, produces a superior quality of glass; so that in this
branch of industry the question of superiority seems already settled.
Having said thus much of an industry now in its infancy but promising
great growth, I submit tables of analyses of common and of the natural
or marsh gas, the latter from a paper recently prepared by a committee
of the Engineers' Society of Western Pennsylvania, and for the use of
which I am indebted to that association: