Power Gas of Bowesfield Lane were in the forefront of constructing the new types of gas works that used naphtha (a sort of low grade petrol) rather than coal. They had already built the first steam reforming plant for the Gas Industry at Proven, in Glasgow, in 1963.
This brochure shows a greatly improved naphtha based plant at Seabank, near Bristol. It was a world first, incorporating a “Gas Recycle Hydrogenator”, as well as an ICI type steam reformer. The plant reduced the cost of gas making by another 10-20% compared to the simple steam reforming process, which itself was about 30% cheaper than making gas from coal.
The brochure states that Power Gas were taken over by Davy United, not Head Wrightson as I had thought.
Images and details courtesy of Fred Starr.
I live near the old Seabank site, now another power station. I’m doinf some reaseach into the plant at Seabank, I was wonder do you have any more pages from the above brochure. I visited the site when I was kid and remember a scale model of the plant. Wish I had a camera then :-(. South West Gas times.
I was at Coleshill (not Colehill) near Birmingham myself, doing experimental work, from about late 1967 to 1971. I have a picture of one of the reformers if anyone is interested. I also visited the Isle of Grain site several times. Coleshill was vast, but was shut down as a gas making place in the early seventies. The site was then cleared but almost as a coincidence, we used for an advanced gas turbine project of mine in 1996 before we were kicked off.
The ICI 500 process was an add on piece of equipment to an ICI steam reformer. The aim was to bring the calorific value of reformed gas up from 300BTU/cu.ft to 500, avoiding the need to add expensive butane or propane. Hence its name.
The ICI 500 process consisted of a large pressure vessel full of catalyst running at about 500°C which took reformed gas and vaporised naphtha, which reacted to produce a gas with a fairly high methane content.
I served my apprenticeship from 1964 (as I left school at 16) as an Instrument Engineer, during which time I gained my HNC on day release. Each summer, when we had no college, we would be sent to a construction site – mine were Leith, Isle of Grain (Kent) and Colehill (West Midlands). The process then being built was called the ICI 500 process and used their catalysts to reform the naphtha. We certainly got a very good grounding as engineers, thanks to the training department.
I think the History of the Power Gas Company was tied in with Ashmore Benson Pease as the manufacturing arm of the group at South Works Stockton. Ashmores amalgamated with Davy United of Sheffield to form a company that could manufacture Both the Steel Making plant and the Continuous Rolling Mills, with Power Gas being the Designers and Project Managers. Power Gas Designed and developed the Firstall British Petro Chemical Complex during the sixties, they lost a large amount of money on the project but gained invaluable experience in the Petro Chemical Design and Project Management fields. During this period they bought out the McKee division of Head Wrightsons to broaden their Design experience. Later Whessoe bought out the manufacturing arm of the group in the late sixties, comprising of the South Works complex. Power Gas were then taken over by Kaverna as going concern who eventually sold out to the present owners Siemens who have their Head office in the South Bank Stockton area. Siemens continue to service the World with first class Design and Project Management for the steel industry. This is the history as how I remember it, and I am open to comments..
Power-Gas sent me to Billingham Tech for a year for a secretarial course (with a few others right out of high school). They put us in the typing pool until junior secretary positions opened up. I worked as secretary to the Project Engineering Manager, Neil Nimmo. Left in 1970 to come to the US. Two years later I worked for Halcon International in NY and bumped into one of the engineers who used to work for PG. Small world.
Instrument technicians were absolutely vital on these plants as they were so automated. Several “streams” would be run from a modern control room by the shift supervisor and the panel man, as he was called. Pressures, temperatures, and flows from all critical parts of the plant were relayed back, electrically, to the control room. If a change in output was needed, the panel man would twiddle the appropriate knobs and this would change the position of the control valves..
During construction, Instrument mechanics would set up pressure and temperature sensors, etc throughout the plant. It was a time consuming job to get everything right. However, during plant operation, the works would have its own instrument mechanic on during the day, as there was always something that needed adjusting.
I believe that the town gas steam reformer at Hartlepool was the nearest in the country to Power Gas. It was probably because of this that a group of Russians made a tour of the plant around 1970.
I worked on the construction and commisioning of the gas plant at Proven Mill as instrument tech. I really enjoyed the project and went from there to the gas plant at Hartlepool.