Gaseous Combustion at High Pressures

The paper gives an account of investigations on gaseous combustion under high pressures carried out in the Fuel Department of the University of Deeds during the years 1906-12, with a special installation of apparatus, the cost of which was defrayed out of grants made from time to time by the Government Grant Committee. Experiments in which mixtures of methane with less than its own volume of oxygen were exploded in steel bombs at initial pressures of between 8 and 32 atmospheres have given results in harmony with the "hydroxylation" theory of hydrocarbon combustion put forward some years ago by Prof. Bone. The influence of various secondary reactions upon the products of the primary oxidation whilst the gases are cooling down after the attainment of maximum pressure is discussed in the light of the experimental results.