Leopoldau gasworks


Gasometer Leopoldau
Gasometer Leopoldau
Location data
State :	Austria
Region :	Vienna
City :	Floridsdorf
Construction data
Construction:	1928-1929
Shutdown:	1985 (Gasometer 1)
Reuse:	see section on subsequent use
Cancellation:	1984–1985 (Gasometer 2) 1987 (Gasometer 1)
Technical specifications
Usable volume :	300,000 m³
Others
Destroyed by Allied bombardment on October 13, 1944, rebuilt in the post-war years and reopened in 1952

Hauptstrasse, from the boiler house to the welfare building, around 1911

The Leopoldau gasworks in the 21st district of Floridsdorf in Vienna was, alongside the Simmering gasworks, one of two municipal gasworks producing town gas from coal .

history

Former Leopoldau gas works, around 1911

Furnace system with ejector and leveling machines, coal tower and belt conveyor

Originally, the city of Vienna was supplied by private companies - as was the case with electrical energy - and here too the city government under Mayor Karl Lueger tried to localize the gas supply and initially built the Simmering gas works.

On February 10, 1906, the Vienna City Council decided to also supply the outskirts , which were currently still supplied with gas by the Imperial Continental Gas Association (ICGA), with urban gas and the still valid contract with the ICGA would expire on December 31, 1911 allow. Therefore, in addition to the full expansion of the Simmering gasworks in Leopoldau , another gasworks should be built. These plans were approved by the municipal council committee for the municipal gas works on October 16, 1907 and the municipal council on October 25, 1908.

However, work on the Leopoldau gasworks was delayed. The private gas companies tried to extend the supply contracts, but on July 1, 1909, the local council finally refused.

The construction work for the new gasworks officially began with the groundbreaking ceremony in autumn 1909, the start of full operation took place on November 17, 1911, the ceremonial opening on December 18 of the same year and finally the inauguration as part of a ceremony on November 16. April 1912. At that time, the Leopoldau gasworks supplied around 250,000 cubic meters of gas per hour. The construction of the gasworks was documented photographically by Marianne Strobl .

In 1935 the construction of the Floridsdorf relief sewer began in particular because of the constant gasworks waste water in the Floridsdorf collecting canal .

From January 18, 1943, small amounts of natural gas were added to the gas produced here for the first time .

During the Second World War, the approximately 44-hectare area was hit by around 160 high-explosive and 50 incendiary bombs, killing seven people. In one of the air raids on October 13, 1944, the 300,000 cubic meter gasometer , which was built between 1928 and 1929, was destroyed. This was rebuilt in the post-war years and put into operation again in February 1952.

Since 1958, attempts at detoxification, a reduction of the carbon monoxide content of the gas from about 10 to 3 percent, have been made at the Leopoldau gasworks. In February 1964, Mayor Franz Jonas was informed about the status of the research work and on this occasion gave the order to submit a project draft with the technical data and the expected costs to the Vienna City Council. The permanent detoxification of the city gas was realized between 1964 and 1968.

On August 28, 1969, the last chamber furnace used to generate gas was shut down in the Leopoldau gas works.

Gasometer 2 was canceled between 1984 and 1985. In 1985, Gasometer 1 was shut down, which was finally also canceled in 1987.

What has been preserved, however, according to Dehio is a remarkable ensemble of residential and administrative buildings, which are accessed through two avenues. These one and two-storey buildings with high hipped or mansard hipped roofs were built in a villa and castle typology with borrowings from the local style.

investment

Coke processing, fire fighting vehicle and on the right a chamber furnace system

Generator system during construction with 12 rotating grate generators

The gas (luminous gas, town gas, coal gas) was extracted in chamber furnaces with originally 72 chambers 10 meters long, 2.2 meters high and 0.5 meters wide, each filled with around 11 tons of coal. This was degassed for around 23 hours in the absence of air.

The chamber furnaces were heated with so-called generator gas, which was supplied in the central generator system equipped with 12 rotating grate generators. In these generators, air and steam were blown through glowing coke, creating the generator gas. This was cleaned, heated and burned in the chamber furnaces to heat the chambers.

The resulting raw gas was sucked off and cooled, thereby separating it from tar and ammonia water . It was finally cleaned of these components and of naphthalene in the laundry house.

After being temporarily stored in a 150,000 cubic meter gasometer, the gas was blown by means of a turbo blower through a pipeline over the Kaiser-Franz-Josef Bridge into the Brigittenau gasometer , which was the largest on the continent at the time of its construction.

Tar, ammonia water and washing oil were collected in free-standing Intze containers . The ammonia water was processed in a Skoda-Wetzler ammonia factory.

Due to the extensive mechanization, only about 150 people were employed here at the time the gasworks went into operation.

power

The capacity of the Leopoldau gas works was increased from 50 million cubic meters of town gas annually in 1912 to 166 million cubic meters in 1951. For this purpose around 170 wagons of coal were needed every day.

While the gas works was in operation, around 15 million tons of coal were processed and over five billion cubic meters of town gas was generated from it.

Products

Coal tower and coke processing plant

The main product and corporate purpose was gas. 300 to 350 cubic meters of gas were extracted from one ton of gas coal. In addition, the dry distillation produced around 650 kilograms of coke, 40 kilograms of tar, 60 kilograms of "gas water" with a content of around two to three kilograms of ammonia, 1.2 kilograms of a benzene-toluene mixture and sulfur and sulfur compounds per ton of coal.

The by-products were initially considered to be undesirable waste, which was treated carelessly out of ignorance of its impact on the environment. The progressive development of the chemical industry resulted in the construction of plants to process the former waste, which became an additional source of money for the Viennese gas works. In 1950, around a million Swiss francs and a quarter of a million German marks were earned through the export of the raw materials obtained here.

Contaminated site

The site of the former gasworks Leopoldau is a contaminated site W20 gasworks Leopoldau in the register of contaminated sites included the Federal Environment Agency.

The reason for this measure is contamination of the soil with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAH , phenols , cyanides and volatile aromatic hydrocarbons BTEX , which also affect the groundwater and can be detected up to a distance of 200 meters.

As early as 1916, when a well was being built, massive tar contamination of the soil and groundwater was discovered. When another well was built in 1934, groundwater contaminated with oil was also found.

The air raids during the Second World War with the damage they caused and the bursting of a tar container caused pollution, as did later accidents.

Subsequent use

Sphere gas container in the former Leopoldau gas works

Residential and administrative building of the former Leopoldau gasworks

The Leopoldau gas and steam power plant was built on part of the site of the former Leopoldau gasworks .
In 1981, two spherical gas tanks with a volume of 16,000 cubic meters each were put into operation. The containers, which worked with positive pressure and which were removed in 2013, had a capacity of 150,000 cubic meters each.
The Leopoldau company garage of Wiener Linien was opened on another part of the site in July 2007 . Around 200 buses for a total of 27 bus routes - including seven of the NightLine Vienna - are parked here.
Since 2018, new residential buildings have been built on a large part of the former area, which will extend west to Pfendlerstrasse and east to Richard Neutra Strasse around mid-2020.

literature

The Leopoldau municipal gasworks . Chwala's Druck, Vienna 1911, ÖNB .
Home committee of the teachers working groups of the XXI. District: The XXI. Viennese district. A home book for school and home . Teacher's library, volume 75. German publishing house for youth and people, Vienna 1926, OBV .
Leopoldau gasworks. 50 years of progress in gas production. Wiener Stadtwerke-Gaswerke, Vienna 1961, OBV .
Robert Medek: 75 years of the municipal gas works Vienna-Leopoldau. Development of municipal gas supply since 1911. Special exhibition by Wiener Stadtwerke-Gaswerke in the Floridsdorf District Museum, April 23 to June 21, 1987 . Wiener Stadtwerke-Gaswerke, Vienna 1987, OBV .
Rudolf Schlauer (Red.), Jörg Wollmann (Ill.), Austrian Association for the Gas and Water Sector and Association of Gas and Heat Supply Companies (Ed.): 75 years of Leopoldau gas works . Lorenz, Vienna 1986, ÖNB .
Felix Czeike : Historical Lexicon Vienna. Volume 1: A – Da. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-218-00543-4 .
DEHIO Vienna - X. to XIX. and XXI. to XXIII. District . Anton Schroll & Co, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-7031-0693-X .