Abstract
IN World Power of October an interesting device is described for ‘degassing’ underground channels, such as sewers, drains and conduits, which has been used successfully abroad. Many large towns have records of street explosions proving the dangers arising from fortuitous concentration of gases such as methane, ether and benzene arising from the greater use of petrols in vehicles and the increasing variety of industrial chemical processes. As a rule, these gases are heavier than air, and become highly explosive when mixed with it. The apparatus consists of a motor-driven centrifugal suction fan. This is connected by suitable tubing to a floating suction head. The heavy gases are collected as nearly as possible at the level of the water at the suction head and pass through the tube with considerable velocity to the fan in the container. The power taken to drive the fan is only nine hundredths of a horsepower, and its capacity is a third of a cubic metre per second. The electrical vehicle used for transporting the degasser is operated by an 80-volt battery. According to recent experiments, an area contained by a circumference of about 300 metres and covering sewers approximately 1,000 metres in total length can be degassed in 10-15 minutes. It was proved that the ordinary method of circulating fresh air in the system was useless and sometimes dangerous.
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Degassing by Electricity. Nature 138, 1090–1091 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/1381090c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1381090c0