They have just finally taken down the last one in Bath. This is a 'good' thing. What has to be realised is that the ones that are being taken down are usually in the heart of a city and take up valuable 'brownfield development land.<p>The UK is suffering from a housing shortage in certain areas of the country and has very few options to expand housing stock that do not involve developing greenfield sites.<p>I do wish they could have come up with a way to incorporate the existing structures into the new development but this would be perceived as a massive long term maintenance issue and probably not an optimum housing density.<p>From a city point of view, 2000+ new homes vs three defunct gas holders is a no brainer in revenue generation (£4,000,000 per year in taxes). <a href="http://www.bathwesternriverside.com/overview/" rel="nofollow">http://www.bathwesternriverside.com/overview/</a>
Whenever some new structure comes around, people complain and moan about noise, how they look, and generally take a 'not on my doorstep' attitude.<p>Then, X years later, when they get taken away, people say they miss them.
I am trying to imagine a building sized cylinder appearing and dissapearing throughout the day in my neighbourhood, on a regular basis. Seems kind of cool to me.
I heard this story on the radio first, which led to me being nonplussed when I later saw the pictures.<p>Stories like this, and the current frenzy for listed buildings in the UK makes me feel there is a little too much respect afforded past architecture. Should we be keeping structures that aren't beautiful either by the standards of their time or ours, simply because it is old? Will we be eventually constrained in creating new styles, if we are stuck preserving past ones?
I was wondering if these could be used to store hydrogen generated by solar water-splitting?
Could the hydrogen be piped in place of natural gas? Or combined with natural gas? seemingly "town gas" was primarily hydrogen [1].
Or it could generate electricity via combustion or fuel cell, providing dispatchable renewable energy with grid-scale storage :)<p>An averaged-size gas-holder has capacity of ~50,000 m^3 [2]. Gas holders store gas at essentially atmospheric pressure, so the stored hydrogen has an energy density of ~0.01 MJ/L [3] = ~10^7 J/m^3. So the gas-holder energy capacity is ~5*10^11 J = ~140 MWh<p>In comparison Dinorwig pumped-storage power station in the UK has an energy capacity of ~9000 MWh [4]<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas#Composition" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas#Composition</a><p>[2] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_holder" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_holder</a><p>[3] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density</a><p>[4] <a href="http://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_191.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_191.shtml</a>
The caption of one of the photos - 'The pylon stays, the gas holder will go' - made me think: Will pylons ever go away? Is there any possible future tech out there that might make electricity pylons a thing of the past too?
The train from Cheltenham to West Drayton used to travel past some light industrial sites. I strongly associate the smell of coffee[1], canals and car-scrapyards, and the gas-holder next to that line with visiting my parents when they lived outside London.<p>There's a bunch of this functional stuff that just gets churned over. That's probably mostly good, but it'd be nice to keep a few of them around as examples.<p>I think we (in the UK) can be dismissive of stuff that's only from the 1950s or 1920s because we have so much that is much much older.<p>[1] The Nestle factory?
The US produces and consumes enormous amounts of natural gas. Demand peaks in winter, and there is need for seasonal storage, mostly underground.[1] The amount stored is far greater than what could be contained by gas holders.<p>Gas holders used to dot the periphery of big cities in the US, and some probably still do. But there's actually a newer solution: LNG. This sounds expensive, because large amounts of energy are required to liquify the gas. But the 600:1 volume improvement makes it worthwhile.<p>Two LNG tanks or 1200 gas holders? You decide! :)<p>Of course, sometimes things go horribly wrong[2], which is how I first learned about LNG for "peakshaving"[3] purposes.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.eia.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/analysis_publications/storagebasics/storagebasics.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.eia.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/analysis_publicat...</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.kulr8.com/story/25118246/fire-and-explosion-at-natural-gas-plant-in-plymouth" rel="nofollow">http://www.kulr8.com/story/25118246/fire-and-explosion-at-na...</a>
[3] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lng#Small-scale_liquefaction_plants" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lng#Small-scale_liquefaction_p...</a>
I've always wondered about making a building that follows the same form and re-using the frame externally (though obviously not for structural support)
And on the other side of the ocean, a deactivated gasometer at Rio de Janeiro (<a href="https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas%C3%B4metro_de_S%C3%A3o_Crist%C3%B3v%C3%A3o" rel="nofollow">https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas%C3%B4metro_de_S%C3%A3o_Cri...</a>) will also be replaced by residential and commercial buildings (<a href="http://oglobo.globo.com/rio/terreno-do-gasometro-vai-ser-ocupado-por-predios-residenciais-comerciais-hoteis-shoppings-13627275" rel="nofollow">http://oglobo.globo.com/rio/terreno-do-gasometro-vai-ser-ocu...</a>).
I rather like the one in Granton Edinburgh:<p><a href="http://www.grantonhistory.org/industry/gas_works.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.grantonhistory.org/industry/gas_works.htm</a>
In Amsterdam one of these (and the very old industrial terrain around it) has been repurposed into public spaces.<p>Concerts/Festivals are frequently held: <a href="http://www.residentadvisor.net/images/clubs/photos/2012-04-08_awakenings_0919_photo-company.nl.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.residentadvisor.net/images/clubs/photos/2012-04-0...</a>
Gas holder time lapse <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZpVojSJ09k&t=66" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZpVojSJ09k&t=66</a>
Oh FFS. I bet these are the same people who are complaining about (much more elegant and beautiful IMO) wind turbines.<p>These things were elegant engineering when they were doing something valuable, but it's the elegance of something functional - and they're not functional any more. They take up a lot of space that could be used productively. Good riddance.