60 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



COMPOSITION OF GAS FROM A WELL AT DEXTER, KAN. 



Bj' D. F. McFaeland, University of Kansas, Lawrence. 

 Read before the Academy, at Topeka, December 30, 1904. 



\ GAS-WELL drilled at Dexter, in Cowley county, Kansas, has 

 -^-^ attracted a great deal of attention, owing to the fact that the gas 

 which it yields will not burn. The well was drilled in 1903, and at a 

 depth of about 400 feet a very strong flow of gas was encountered. 

 According to measurements made by reliable parties at the well, and 

 reported to Prof. E. Haworth, state geologist, the pressure of the gas 

 was 120 pounds per square inch, and the rate of flow was estimated 

 to be ,7,000,000 feet per twenty-four hours. 



Attempts were made to use the gas as a fuel, and it was soon found 

 that the only way to make it burn was to turn it into a fire-box under 

 a boiler where a good fire was already burning. Under these condi- 

 tions the gas would burn and would generate enough heat to raise 

 steam in the boiler, but as soon as the application of external heat 

 ceased, it would no longer burn. No improvement in its combusti- 

 bility was noticed after the well had been allowed to flow freely for 

 fourteen days. 



Professor Haworth, becoming interested in the gas, had a cylinder 

 specially prepared with a valve at each end shipped to the well, 

 where it was first filled with water, and this was then displaced by 

 gas. By closing the lower valve and allowing the flow from the well 

 to continue for a time the full pressure of the well was obtained in 

 the cylinder, after which it was securely closed and sent to the Uni- 

 versity of Kansas, where it was turned over to the department of 

 chemistry for analysis. 



The results of the analysis have shown the gas to be of very un- 

 usual composition and totally different from gas from other Kansas 

 gas-wells. 



In the analysis, the methods of Hempel's gas analysis were used in 

 the main, and these are so well known as to need no extended descrip- 

 tion. Oxygen was determined with a phosphorus pipette, carbon 

 dioxide with strong potassium hydroxide solution, and carbon mon- 

 oxide with ammoniacal cuprous chloride solution. Hydrogen was 

 absorbed in a palladium tube, and methane was found by combustion 

 with pure oxygen, and measurement of the resulting contraction and 

 of the carbon dioxide -formed. 



The residual gas left after all of these operations, and constituting 

 what is usually reported in a gas analysis as "nitrogen," was sub- 



