Holló Szilvia Andrea: Budapest's Public Works - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
Town gas from coal - The Óbuda Gas Works (1913-84)
More than a hundred companies worked on the construction, and as the municipality of Budapest gave preferential treatment to domestic firms, hardly a tenth of the sum total on the final account was paid to foreign companies. The staggering amount (running to nearly forty million korona) spent on the construction was pocketed by Hungarian contractors. The Budapest Gas Works Company took over the old factories, the streetlights, and the employees of its Austrian predecessor. After production in Óbuda was started on 16 October 1913, the old, superannuated gashouses were phased out with the exception of the Francis Town plants, which continued in operation for a while longer, with one closing down in 1921 and the other in 1923. The Buda Gas Works was used as a reserve unit until 1 March 1915, and its site was eventually reused by the Ganz Electric Works. (After the company was relocated, the radical reconstruction of the site was undertaken: the factory buildings left standing were given new cultural functions, and their environment was converted into a park; what thus emerged became one of the finest attractions of Buda, the Millenary Park.) The Óbuda Gas Works was ceremonially opened by Mayor István Bárczy on 15 June 1914 in the presence of the ministers of the interior and of commerce, the mayor of Vienna and a delegation from the Vienna gas works. "The visitors were overawed by the huge factory complex, which is, according to the opinion of many, the best and the most modem due to its technological and hygienic equipment as well as its appearance," reported the daily Népszava (The People’s Voice) after the inauguration. International experts agreed that in terms of its equipment this was the most advanced factory of the period in Europe: it comprised coke ovens, generators, coal preparing and coke processing units, gas purifiers, two gasholders of a hundred thousand cubic meter capacity each and a delivery compressor unit. There was also an experimental gashouse, a chemical laboratory and an on-site power plant. (In the latter one can still see the Sulzer Diesel generator that provided electricity to private homes in Óbuda during World War I.) Instead of retorts, there were Koppers regenerative coke ovens installed, into which coal was fed from above and which were heated with generator gas derived from a Kerpely revolving-grate generator using coke dust or brown coal. The gas generated in the oven was conducted to the precooler and then to the liquid purifier; tar, naphthalene and ammonia were removed from the purifying water. (The factory's slender water tower with the three squat tar and ammonia holders next to it came to appear on the logo of the Óbuda Gas Works.) Hydrocarbon was neutralized in the dry purifier, which was followed by the post-purification process after which the end-product passed through the gas meters 20
