Producer Gas is a generic term referring to:
- Wood gas: produced in a gasifier to power cars with ordinary internal combustion engines.
- Town gas: manufactured gas, originally produced from coal, for sale to consumers and municipalities.
- Syngas: used as a fuel source or as an intermediate for the production of other chemicals.
In old movies and stories, when describing suicide by "turning on the gas" and leaving an oven door open without lighting the flame, they were talking about coal gas or town gas. As this gas contained a significant amount of carbon monoxide, the gas was quite toxic. Most town gas was also odorized, if it did not have its own odor. Modern 'natural gas' used in homes is far less toxic, and has a gassy odor added to it for identifying leaks.
Read more about Producer Gas: UK
Famous quotes containing the word gas:
“... when I awake in the middle of the night, since I knew not where I was, I did not even know at first who I was; I only had in the first simplicity the feeling of existing as it must quiver in an animal.... I spent one second above the centuries of civilization, and the confused glimpse of the gas lamps, then of the shirts with turned-down collars, recomposed, little by little, the original lines of my self.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)