manufactured fuel gas

Manufactured fuel gas (such as town gas) would historically have been considered an industrial gas.

Manufactured fuel gases are those produced through an artificial process, usually gasification, at a location known as a gasworks.

In the second half of the 19th century, the manufactured fuel gas industry diversified out of lighting and into heat and cooking.

Manufactured fuel gases include:

Many other manufactured fuel gas utilities were founded first in England, and then in the rest of Europe and North America in the 1820s.

Coal gas, for example, also contains significant quantities of unwanted sulfur and ammonia compounds, as well as heavy hydrocarbons, and so the manufactured fuel gases needed to be purified before they could be used.

The manufacturing process for "synthetic fuel gases" (also known as "manufactured fuel gas", "manufactured gas" or simply "gas") typically consisted of the gasification of combustible materials, usually coal, but also wood and oil.

In the 1890s, pipelines from natural gas fields in Texas and Oklahoma were built to Chicago and other cities, and natural gas was used to supplement manufactured fuel gas supplies, eventually completely displacing it.

Carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, ammonia, chlorine, sulfur dioxide and manufactured fuel gas were already being used during the 19th century, and mainly had uses in food, refrigeration, medicine, and for fuel and gas lighting.