The cost of producing oxygen at Westminster, under specially expensive
conditions, is high--about 12s. per 1,000 cub. ft. When we consider,
however, that the cost should only embrace attendance, fuel, wear and
tear, and a little lime and soda for the purifiers, that the
consumption of fuel is small, the wear and tear light, and that the
raw material--air--is obtained for nothing, it ought to be possible to
produce the gas for a third or fourth of this amount in most of our
great manufacturing centers, where the price of fuel is but a third of
that demanded in London, and where provision could be made for
economizing the waste heat, which is entirely lost in the Westminster
installation. Moreover, in estimating this cost all the charges are
thrown on the oxygen; were there any means of utilizing the 4,000 cub.
ft. of nitrogen at present blown away as waste for every thousand
cubic feet of oxygen produced, the nitrogen would of course bear its
share of the cost.
The question of the application of the oxygen is one which must be
determined in its manifold bearings mainly by the experiments of
chemists and scientific men engaged in industrial work. Having
ascertained the method by which and the limit of cost within which it
is possible to use oxygen in their work, it can be seen whether by
Brin's process the gas can be obtained within that limit.
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