Expansion of the Industrial Gas Business

Abstract

Leak-prone metal vessels as well as leather or textile bags had been used for transporting hydrogen, oxygen, coal gas, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide from about 1850. In 1886 the first patents were issued to Howard Lane and Richard Taunton in England for manufacture of the first industrial production methods for high-pressure gas cylinders. In Germany in 1886 Max and Reinhard Mannesmann patented a new, revolutionary production method for manufacturing seamless steel tubes by extrusion, a method which was soon adapted to the manufacture of gas cylinders. These innovations marked a major step toward the birth of the industrial gases business. Gases could now be transported in a safe way at pressures as high as 100 bars. The first international safety regulation for the transport of high-pressure gas was established in 1890. The new cylinders were first used for the transportation of oxygen from Brin Oxygen in London, which pioneered commercial gas production by chemical processes. In the United States carbon dioxide transport in cylinders was pioneered by Jacob Baur, who established the Liquid Carbonic Company in 1888.