Manufactured Gas and Distribution
Early gas manufacturing and distribution in Winnipeg
As the population of Manitoba started to grow in the late 1800s, so did the energy needs of the blossoming communities. With technology emerging for electrical and gas lighting, a rivalry began among companies supplying these competing energy sources that continued for many years.
In 1873, the population of the Red River settlement was a mere 1,000 people when the City of Winnipeg was incorporated. The Winnipeg Gas Company was incorporated on March 8, of that same year too, to provide the City of Winnipeg with gas lighting. Also in that same year, the first electric ‘arc light’ was installed to illuminate the Davis House Hotel on Main Street1. That first light’s power source was likely a nearby coal-fired steam engine that powered a dynamo. Generating electricity in this way was inefficient and expensive.
At the time, manufactured gas for street lighting was a cost-effective and booming business in eastern Canada, United States, and abroad but it took several attempts before a successful system emerged in Winnipeg. Entrepreneurs Donald Smith, James McKay and Andrew G. B. Bannatyne formed the Winnipeg Gas Company with the intent to provide that service, but in six years they were unable to progress beyond a company on paper only. In 1881, their company was taken over by the Manitoba Electric and Gas Light Company, by which time the population of Winnipeg had grown eight-fold.
First Manufactured Gas Plant
Under the direction of the manager Sam J. Holley, a manufactured-gas plant was constructed on the west side of Rachel Street (now Annabella) at a cost of $20,000. It used a process that made gas from wood and oil. Although some distribution mains were installed, the plant never produced gas.
Figure 1 - 1881 Birds Eye View of Winnipeg showing the First Manufactured Gas Plant Location in downtown Winnipeg in the Point Douglas area. Map credit - Mortimer & Co. Lith. Ottawa. The 1881 map of Winnipeg shows the original Gas Works Plant on Rachel Street which manufactured gas from wood and oil. In 1882–1883, this plant was replaced with a Lowe’s Water Gas Plant that used coal as its main feedstock.
Second Manufactured Gas Plant
In 1882, a new group of businessmen led by Sedley Blanchard took control of the company and convinced James Stuart of Edinburgh, Scotland to establish a Lowe’s Water Gas Plant like the one he had just built in Toronto, Ontario. This technology, invented in 1873, provided superior heating and illumination with lower production costs. The new plant was built in the same location and completed in 1883, operating on coal as the main feedstock. The new facility could manufacture 16,000 cubic feet of gas per hour and had a “holding tank” with a capacity of 30,000 cubic feet.
Altogether, 5½ miles of underground gas mains were laid using white pine logs cut into ten-foot sections, bored out and coated in pitch, then laid in trenches dug mostly by hand. The company was warned by the Winnipeg Board of Works that the pipes would have to be installed prior to 1 May 1884 at which time the laying of pavement would commence.
Samples of wooden gas pipes are shown in Figure 3a and 3b.
At a meeting of the Board of Works yesterday it was decided to instruct the city engineer to advertise for tenders for block paving on Main Street. A by-law will also be introduced into the Council to compel the gas and water companies to lay their pipes before the 1st of May next at which time it is proposed to commence the laying of pavement. If these companies fail to put down their pipes within the prescribed time, the city will do the work at the expense of the companies. Manitoba Daily Free Press, Wednesday, 31 October 1883
On Christmas Eve 1883, a company crew arrived at a gas lamp at Main Street near Bannatyne Avenue, set up a ladder, and lamplighter John Mowat “struck a spark with his flint striker immediately igniting the gas.” The lamp-lighting crew continued along Main Street to Broadway Avenue then proceeded along Market Street, Owen Street, James Street, Fonseca Street, and Princess Street; eventually finishing at the company office.
The Manitoba Gas and Light Company have decided to turn on the gas this evening. The works will be in full blast today. Manitoba Daily Free Press, Monday, 24 December 1883.
Winnipeg Electric Street Railway Company Expanded Role
The 1892 incorporation of the Winnipeg Electric Street Railway Company by a Special Act of the Manitoba Legislature granted the company extensive rights over construction and operation of street railways. The company also gained the ability to produce, sell, lease, and dispose of electric light, heat, and power; and to acquire street railway, gas and electric lighting franchises. This final provision led the Winnipeg Electric Street Railway Company to also purchase the Manitoba Electric and Gas Light Company in 1898.
Fuel Sources
Early manufactured-gas plants experimented with burning a range of products to create illuminating gases, including pine trees and peat, but the most common and longest-used feedstock was coal. The economics and logistics of operating a manufactured-gas system in Canada generally limited viable operations to urban areas with access to cheap coal. The gas plant that began operating in Winnipeg in 1883 enriched the coal gas with oil.
The era of manufactured coal gas continued in Winnipeg and rural Manitoba until 1957 when natural gas arrived in a pipeline from Alberta.
Side Bar on Manufactured Gas Technology
Early manufactured gas plants experimented with burning a range of products to create illuminating gases, including pine trees and peat, but the most common and longest-used feedstock was coal. The economics and logistics of operating a manufactured gas system in Canada generally limited viable operations to urban areas with access to cheap coal.
For coal carbonization, coal was used both as the heat source and the feedstock, coal gas is produced through the distillation of coal where the coal is broken down into its volatile components in an anaerobic (oxygen free) environment, converting about 40% to coal gas, and about 60% coke (a by-product) by weight. The gas was cooled in a device known as a hydraulic main where some of the vapours were converted to liquids (known as liquors, coal tar, or contaminated water) and the remainder was the product “coal gas” which was further refined by “washing” the gas in water and moist lime or moist iron oxide beds to remove impurities.
The Lowe Carbureted Water Plant that began operation in 1883 in Winnipeg utilized a process consisting of enriching the “coal gas” with oil. As in previous coal gas processes, the coal is volatilized with heat. The coal gas is then run through a carburetor and injected with oil into the vapour. The combination of coal gas and oil were then superheated (where the gas is heated above volatilization temperatures) in which the oil was thermally cracked and became “fixed” to the coal gas. The oil-gas mixture was cooled and scrubbed then producing a “blue gas” product with heating values of approximately 300 to 350 Btu per cubic foot, compared to today’s natural gas which has a heating value of about 1,000 Btu per cubic foot.
Gas streetlamps were a growing business in all major cities. Toronto (Consumers Gas) and Ottawa were installing manufactured gas plants and gas streetlamps as a cost-effective means of providing street lighting compared to the cost of kerosene lamps and candles. In 1879, Consumers Gas in Toronto completed its Lowe Water Gas Plant, reduced production costs by 30%, and obtained the Patent to the process.
The cost and illumination performance of gas lamp systems continued to improve with technology advancements such as:
* invention of the “Lowe’s Carbureted Water Gas” in 1873 by Professor L. Lowe of Pennsylvania developed what became known as known as Lowe’s Water Gas Process. He improved heating values, illumination qualities and lowered production costs.
* invention of the Welsbach gas mantle in 1885, a cotton fabric impregnated with thorium and cerium that produced an “intense white light”. This breakthrough “improved the efficiency of gas lamps by a factor of seven”.
References
- The History of Electric Power in Manitoba, Manitoba Hydro publication, 2010, https://www.hydro.mb.ca/docs/corporate/history_of_electric_power_book.pdf File:History of electric power book.pdf
- History of the Electrical Industry in Manitoba, David S. G. Ross, P. Eng. MHS Transactions, Series 3 1963-64 season. https://mhs.mb.ca/docs//transactions/3/electricalindustry.shtml
Compiled by
- Alan Aftanas, PEng, Manitoba Hydro
- Wendy Love, PEng, Manitoba Hydro
Reviewed by Glen N. Cook, PEng, (SM), FEC
Editing by Jim Burns, PhD
Posted by Glen N. Cook, PEng, (SM), FEC
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