Abstract
IN an article in Engineering of May 8, Mr. Theodore Rich gives an account of the development of the use of bottled butane gas in rural areas with no gas or electricity supply in France, the United States and Great Britain. Butane (C4H10) can be obtained from natural gas, crude oil or coal; it liquefies under a pressure of 23 Ib. per sq. in. at 60° F. At a temperature of 104 ° F. the pressure of liquefaction is only 62 lb. per sq. in., and it can therefore be delivered to customers in comparatively light steel bottles. In France the bottles contain 28.6 Ib. of liquefied gas, which has a heat content of 21-590 B.Th.U. per lb. The cost works out at about 3s. a therm. It is distributed by several thousand agents, and the gas is used particularly for cooking, one bottle containing sufficient gas to cook for a family of three persons for six or seven weeks. At the Paris Fair of May 1935, practically every maker of gas stoves showed apparatus for the use of butane. The manufacture of butane and isobutane in Great Britain has been undertaken by Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., at Birmingham, and the gas is being marketed as ‘Calor’ gas. Butane can be used for gas fires, geysers and for house lighting, and in the villages of Smalldole in Sussex, Stokesley near Middlesbrough and Hay in Brecknockshire, it has been applied to street lighting.
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Butane Gas Supply in Rural Areas. Nature 137, 862 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137862b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137862b0