Abstract
Man discovered fire and with it the combustion process between 0.5 and 1.4 million years ago. It took him much longer, until 1669, to develop the art of generating a combustible gas from a carbonaceous fuel (Wyer, 1907). It may be appropriate to ask why it took so long. It is even more appropriate to explore why the history of gasification was so chaotic and why the heyday of gasification was so short. Over 12,000 large gasifiers were installed in North America within a period of 30 years, providing electricity and street lights to many large cities. Moreover, in the 1930’s and 1940’s over 1 million automotive gas producers were operated worldwide. The period of commercial use of gas producers was quite short, considering the almost total disappearance of the technology after 1950.
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© 1984 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
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Kaupp, A. (1984). Introduction. In: Gasification of Rice Hulls. Vieweg+Teubner Verlag, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-96308-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-96308-6_1
Publisher Name: Vieweg+Teubner Verlag, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-528-02002-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-322-96308-6
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