In Fouche's earliest attempts to design an acetylene
blowpipe, the gas was first saturated with a combustible vapour, such as
that of petroleum spirit or ether, and the mixture was consumed with a
blast of oxygen in an ordinary coal-gas blow-pipe. The apparatus worked
fairly well, but gave a flame of varying character; it was capable of
fusing iron, raised a pencil of lime to a more brilliant degree of
incandescence than the eth-oxygen burner, and did not deposit carbon at
the jet. The matter, however, was not pursued, as the blowpipe fed with
undiluted acetylene took its place. The second apparatus constructed by
Fouche was the high-pressure blowpipe, the theoretical aspect of which
has already been studied. In this, acetylene passing through a water-seal
from a cylinder where it is stored as a solution in acetone (_cf._
Chapter XI.), and oxygen coming from another cylinder, are each allowed
to enter the blowpipe at a pressure of 118 to 157 inches of water column
(_i.e._, 8.7 to 11.6 inches of mercury; 4.2 to 5.7 lb. per square
inch, or 0.3 to 0.4 atmosphere). The gases mix in a chamber tightly
packed with porous matter such as that which is employed in the original
acetylene reservoir, and finally issue from a jet having a diameter of 1
millimetre at the necessary speed of 100 to 150 metres per second.
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