M.'s Inspectors of Explosives.
DILUTED ACETYLENE.--Acetylene is naturally capable of admixture or
dilution with any other gas or vapour; and the operation may be regarded
in either of two ways; (1) as a, means of improving the burning qualities
of the acetylene itself, or (2) as a means of conferring upon some other
gas increased luminosity. In the early days of the acetylene industry,
generation was performed in so haphazard a fashion, purification so
generally omitted, and the burners were so inefficient, that it was
proposed to add to the gas a comparatively small proportion of some other
gaseous fluid which should be capable of making it burn without
deposition of carbon while not seriously impairing its latent
illuminating power. One of the first diluents suggested was carbon
dioxide (carbonic acid gas), because this gas is very easy and cheap to
prepare; and because it was stated that acetylene would bear an addition
of 5 or even 8 per cent, of carbon dioxide and yet develop its full
degree of luminosity. This last assertion requires substantiation; for it
is at least a grave theoretical error to add a non-inflammable gas to a
combustible one, as is seen in the lower efficiency of all flames when
burning in common air in comparison with that which they exhibit in
oxygen; while from the practical aspect, so harmful is carbon dioxide in
an illuminating gas, that coal-gas and carburetted water-gas are
frequently most rigorously freed from it, because a certain gain in
illuminating power may often thus be achieved more cheaply than by direct
enrichment of the gas by addition of hydrocarbons.
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