Gas holder

"Gasometer" redirects here. For other uses, see Gasometer (disambiguation).

30,000m³ BF Gas holder at Rautaruukki Steel in Finland

A gas holder, sometimes called a gasometer, is a large container in which natural gas or town gas is stored near atmospheric pressure at ambient temperatures. The volume of the container follows the quantity of stored gas, with pressure coming from the weight of a movable cap. Typical volumes for large gasholders are about 50,000 cubic metres, with 60 metre diameter structures. Gasholders tend to be used nowadays for balancing purposes (making sure gas pipes can be operated within a safe range of pressures) rather than for actually storing gas for later use.

Etymology

The term gasometer was originally coined by William Murdoch, the inventor of gas lighting, in the late 18th century.

Despite the objections of his associates that his so-called "gasometer" was not a meter but a container, the name was retained and came into general use. The term "gasometer" is discouraged for use in technical circles, where the term "gas holder" is preferred. The word "gasometer" is also used to describe a gas meter (a meter for measuring the amount of gas flowing through a particular pipe).

The spelling "gas holder" is used by the BBC, though the variant "gasholder" is common and they are often both used in the same paper.

History

Design for the Troy Gas Light Company's Gasholder Building, built in 1873.

Before the mid 20th century coal gas was produced in retorts from coal through the process of coal gasification. This was first used for municipal lighting passing through wooden or metal pipes. The first public piped gas supply was to 13 gas lamps, each with three glass globes along the length of Pall Mall, London in 1807. The credit for this goes to the inventor and entrepreneur Fredrick Winsor. Digging up streets to lay pipes required legislation and this delayed the development of street lighting and gas for domestic illumination, heating, and cooking. William Murdoch and his pupil Samuel Clegg installed retorts in individual factories and work places. The first commercial gas works was built by the London and Westminster Gas Light and Coke Company in Great Peter Street in 1812 laying wooden pipes to illuminate Westminster Bridge with gas lights on New Year's Eve in 1813. Public gas lights were seen as a crime reduction measure and as such, and until the 1840s, regulation lay with the Police Authority rather than the elected council.

By the 1850s, every small to medium-sized town and city had a gas plant to provide for street lighting. Subscribing customers could also have piped lines to their houses. By this era, gas lighting became accepted. The advent of incandescent gas lighting in factories, homes and in the streets, replacing oil lamps and candles with steady clear light, almost matching daylight in its colour, turned night into day for many—making night shift work possible in industries where light was all important—in spinning, weaving and making up garments etc. Gas works were built in almost every town, main streets were brightly illuminated and gas was piped in the streets to the majority of urban households.

The telescopic gas holder was first invented as early as 1824, and the first working example was built in Leeds. The benefits of the greatly increased storage the holders provided for local gas works were soon appreciated, and gas holders were built all around the country in great quantities from the middle of the century. The large gas holders at King's Cross were built in the 1860s to provide gas storage for a large part of London.

William Gadd from Manchester invented the spirally guided gas holder in 1890. Instead of the use of external columns or guide frames, his design operated with spiral rails. The first commercial design was built in Northwich, Cheshire in the same year. By the end of the century, most towns in Britain had their own gas works and gas holders.

The inter-war years were marked by the development of improvements in storage, especially the waterless gas holder, and in distribution, with the advent of 2–4 inch steel pipes to convey gas at up to 50 psi (340 kPa) as feeder mains to the traditional cast iron pipes.

Types

Gas holder schematic

There are two basic types of gasholder — rigid waterless and telescoping. Rigid waterless gas holders were a very early design which showed no sign of expansion or contraction. There are modern versions of the waterless gas holder, e.g. oil-sealed, grease-sealed and "dry seal" (membrane) types.

Telescoping holders fall into two subcategories. The earlier of the telescoping variety were column guided variations and were built in Victorian times. To guide the telescoping walls, or "lifts", they have an external fixed frame, visible at a fixed height at all times. Spiral guided gasholders were built in the UK up until 1983. These have no frame and each lift is guided by the one below, rotating as it goes up as dictated by helical runners.

Both telescoping types use the manometric property of water to provide a seal. The whole tank floats in a circular or annular water reservoir, held up by the roughly constant pressure of a varying volume of gas, the pressure determined by the weight of the structure, and the water providing the seal for the gas within the moving walls. Besides storing the gas, the tank's design serves to establish the pressure of the gas system. With telescoping (multiple lift) tanks, the innermost tank has a ~1 ft wide by 2 ft high (30x60 cm) lip around the outside of the bottom edge, called a cup, which picks up water as it rises above the reservoir water level. This immediately engages a downward lip on the inner rim of the next outer lift, called a grip, and as this grip sinks into the cup, it preserves the water seal as the inner tank continues to rise until the grip grounds on the cup, whereupon further injection of gas will start to raise that lift as well. Holders were built with as many as four lifts.

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  Column guided gas holder at Cross Gates, Leeds. First of a former twin holder station built around 1900
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  Another view of the gas holder at Cross Gates, Leeds
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  Spiral guided gasholders at the former Meadow Lane Gas Works in Hunslet, Leeds. These were constructed around 1965
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  Gasometer at Bernau bei Berlin, Germany
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  Various forms of gas storage seen in Augsburg, Germany

Advantage

Gasholders hold a large advantage over other methods of storage. They are the only storage method which keeps the gas at district pressure (the pressure required in local gas mains). Once the District Low Pressure Switch falls, and the booster fans come on, the gas in these holders can be at homes, being used, in a very short period of time. Gas is stored in the holder throughout the day, when little gas is being used. At about 5 pm there is a great demand for gas and the holder will come down, supplying the service area.

However, where the distribution system is robust and contains regulators, the gasholder advantages are made redundant.

By location

Europe

Gas holder at West Ham

The pollution associated with gasworks and gas storage makes the land difficult to reclaim for other purposes, but some gasholders, notably in Vienna, have been converted into other uses such as living space and a shopping mall and historical archives for the city. Many sites however were never used for the production of 'town gas', therefore the land contamination is relatively low.

Gasholders have been a major part of the skylines of low-rise British cities for up to 200 years, due to their large distinctive shape and central location. They were originally used for balancing daily demand and generation of town gas. With the move to natural gas and construction of the national grid pipework, their use steadily diminished as the pipe network could both store gas under pressure, and eventually satisfy peak demand directly. London, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle, Salisbury and Glasgow (which has the largest gasometers in the UK) are noted for having many gasholders.

Mirrored installation in the re-located St Pancras gas holder number 8.

Some of these gasholders have become listed buildings. The gasholders behind St Pancras station in London were specially dismantled when the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link was being created, with Gasholder No 8 being re-erected on a nearby site as part of a housing development. Most gasholders are no longer used, and a program of dismantling is underway to release the land for reuse.

A gasworks in South Lotts, Dublin, Ireland was converted into flats.

In the past, holder stations would have an operator living on site controlling their movement. However, with the process control systems now used on these sites, such an operator is obsolete. The tallest gasometer in Europe is 117 metres (384 ft) tall and is located in Oberhausen.

In the U.K. as well as other European countries, a movement to preserve classic gasometers has emerged in recent years, especially after Britain's National Grid announced in 2013 their plans to tear down 76 gas holders, and soon afterwards, Southern and Scottish Gas networks announced that they would demolish 111 others. Christopher Costelloe, director of the Victorian Society, a leader in the campaign to preserve the gasometers said, “Gasometers, by their very size and structure, cannot help but become landmarks. [They] are singularly dramatic structures for all their emptiness.”

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  The gasholders of Provan Gas Works, on the skyline in Glasgow, pipework and the booster house can also be seen.
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  Gasometer of the MAN type in Stuttgart, Germany
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  The Oval Gasholders just outside the Oval cricket ground in London.
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  Four gasholders converted for residential and commercial use in Vienna
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  Gasholder in St. Petersburg, Russia

United States

Rare extant 19th century gasholder house in Saratoga Springs, NY.

Gasometers are comparatively rare in the United States. The most notable of these were erected in St. Louis by the Laclede Gas Light Company in the early 20th century. These Gasometers remained in use until the early first decade of the 21st century when the last one was decommissioned and abandoned in place. The most recently used gasometer in the United States is on the southeast side of Indianapolis but it is to be demolished along with the Citizens Energy Group coke plant. Another pair of holders at the Newtown Holder Station, in Elmhurst, Queens, in New York City, was a popular landmark for traffic reporters until they were demolished in 1996 and became Elmhurst Park. The demolition of two larger "Maspeth Tanks" in nearby Greenpoint, Brooklyn, was described by The New York Times at length.

As of 2016, efforts were underway to save a gasholder building in Concord, New Hampshire.

Australia

Gasometers, though once common, have become rare in Australia. Most gasworks within the country were demolished or repurposed and few gasometers remain because of this. A good example of a largely intact gasometer is located at the Launceston Gasworks site in Tasmania. Though the gas bell has been removed, all other components are intact. The remains of two older 1860s gasometers are also visible on site but only the foundations remain.

For many years, a huge gasometer towered over the Arden Street Oval --- the home ground of the North Melbourne Football Club in the Victorian Football League. Television coverage of Australian Rules football matches played at the famous ground showed the gasometer dominating the landscape. It was demolished in late 1977/early 1978.

Other storage systems

Gas more recently was stored in large underground reservoirs such as salt caverns. In modern times however line-packing is the preferred method.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s it was thought that gasholders could be replaced with high pressure bullets (a cylindrical pressure vessel with hemispherical ends). However, regulations brought in meant that all new bullets must be built several miles out of towns and cities and the security of storing large amounts of high pressure natural gas above ground made them unpopular with local people and councils. Bullets are gradually being decommissioned. It is also possible to store natural gas in liquid form and this is widely practised throughout the world.

See also

• Gasometer Oberhausen
• Gasometer, Vienna
• Natural gas storage
• Water tower, similar utility storage structures
• Gasværket - a theatre in Copenhagen which was formerly a huge gas holder

Further reading

• "Steel making provides energy solution". newsteelconstruction.com. Retrieved 5 July 2015.

External links

• Use of gasometers in Oil & Gas industry
• Condemned: The great gasometer from BBC News, January 28, 1999
• Gasometer Augsburg in Germany and a list of many Gasometers in Europe
• Gasometer Schlieren, Switzerland
• The rise and fall of gasometers Extrageographic magazine
• Gasholders and their tanks