Charlottesville Gas Works

1916 view looking south from Preston Avenue towards downtown Charlottesville with outline of Gas Works in background, King Lumber Company Warehouse in foreground)

Location of Gas Works Plant in 1896

Site Layout of Gas Works Plant in 1896

Gas Generating Plant of the Utica Gas & Elec. Company, c. 1920, note large round gas holding tank

The Charlottesville Gas Works was a complex of buildings and large above ground holding tanks located in the Starr Hill area of the city. Decommissioned and dismantled, the plant was located at the intersection of Coy Avenue and North 4th Street West, adjacent to a short branch line of the may be (called a spur line) which was used to deliver coal to the plant. Now the site of the Charlottesville City Warehouse and Charlottesville Public Works Administration Building and the Starr Hill neighborhood small area plan commissioned by New Hill Development Corporation.)

The coal, delivered by rails, was stored onsite and later gasified by heating the coal in enclosed ovens with an oxygen-poor atmosphere. The by-products of coal gas manufacture included coke, coal tar, sulfur and ammonia.

The Charlottesville Gas Works plant located was owned and operated by the City of Charlottesville. In the late 1800's, coal was converted (gasified) to make coal gas which was piped to area customers to burn for illumination, heating, and cooking. It was supplied to customers through the city owned piped distribution system. While many Virginia municipalities, such as the City of Charlottesville, owned their gas plants - most were privately owned. The area's main source of gas fuel, it was succeeded by Charlottesville Gas, a natural gas utility owned and operated by the City of Charlottesville which provides residents of Charlottesville and urban areas of Albemarle County "for over 150 years." Charlottesville Gas currently has close to 21,000 customers in the area.

In the late 1800's, coal was converted (gasified) to make coal gas which was piped to area customers to burn for illumination, heating, and cooking. It was supplied to customers through the city owned piped distribution system. While many Virginia municipalities, such as the City of Charlottesville, owned their gas plants - most were privately owned. (The Charlottesville and Albemarle Railway Company (C&A) electric streetcars were operated off of an overhead line system that was powered by the railroad's own gas-fired electric power plant.)

Historic background

Coal was used to create manufactured natural gas at "gas works" in urban areas. The synthetic gas, generated by heating coal in an oxygen-free oven, included methane, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, acetylene, and ethelyne. It was distributed through underground pipes and used for lighting streets and the interiors of homes. A few coal-fired power plants convert coal to a gas for use in a gas turbine to generate electricity. It differs from natural gas in composition: natural gas consists primarily of methane; while manufactured gas is a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, and hydrocarbons, with small amounts of carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and nitrogen. By the 1850’s railroads provided transport of bituminous coal ("gas coal") from trans-Appalachian coalfields to furnish fuel to gas plants in eastern urban markets. The superiority of this fuel for gas-making and its low cost compared to other fuels greatly enlarged the gas-lighting market.

Process

The coal gas–manufacturing process involves destructively distilling the mineral in a retort to drive out the volatiles and produce gas. A typical nineteenth-century "bench" consisted of six or more retorts, and a producer-gas furnace that used coal for heating the retorts; coke produced from the coal and tar condensed from the gas were also used as retort fuels. From the retort, the gases were drawn off into a hydraulic main where some of the vapors became "wastes" consisting of tars and contaminated liquids. The gas was run into a condenser from the hydraulic main, where it was cooled and other impurities removed. Often, the gas was funneled into an exhauster that further cooled it. Additional impurities were washed from the gas by running it through beds of moist lime, iron oxides, or wood chips. The final step in the production process was to store the gas in a gasometer or storage tank before distribution via street mains to customers.

By-products

The manufactured gas industry produced a variety of by-products, including tars, oils, sludges, emulsions, ammonia, spent limes and iron oxides, and cyanide, as well as ash, clinker, and coke. These by-products usually resulted from normal operations and occurred at different stages of the production process; In the absence of a market, by-products like coke and tar might be used as fuel at the plants, while other wastes, such as clinkers, lime, woodchips, or iron oxide from the purifying boxes, sometimes mixed with tar, were frequently buried in landfills or in pits on-site.

• May 13, 1922 - The Daily Progress: “At Thursday night’s meeting of the Common Council, a communication was received from the County Attorney relative to refuse from the gas plant being dumped into Schencks Branch. After some discussion the City Manger was instructed to arrange for the economical purchase of storage tanks to take care of this.” Judge R. T. W. Dukes, Jr., Commonwealth Attorney for Albemarle presented a report made by the Game Warden as to the gas plant emptying an unusually large quantity of tar into the Rivanna River, resulting in the killing of fish.