ABSTRACT
Gas, as produced directly from the retorts or generators, is hardly suitable for use, either for gas lighting, or for cooking or as a fuel. Gas manufacturing roasting pyrolysis and releases the feedstock volatile content as the gas product. This raw gas carries tiny particles of residual impurities. Murdock knew this and his assistant Samuel Clegg, Sr., soon began to Žght the problem, inventing the Žrst crude process of puriŽcation. By 1815, in his successive position as Chief Engineer at the Chartered Gas Light & Coke Company. Clegg reasoned correctly that the gas should be forced to rise through a bed of crushed or powdered lime and that the lime should be a bit wet, thus activating its hunger for combining to form sulŽdes, especially with the sulfur being released from the heat roasting of iron pyrites, common in varying degrees to all coal as the ultimate swamp deposit. Clegg’s work ushered in clariŒcation, the subject of the previous chapter (5).
