Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - Petroleum-Storage Installations at Avonmouth and at Cardiff [1890] . . . .

Cooperage-Department

This consists mainly, as shown on Figs. 11, 12 and 13, of a two-storied brick building about 100 feet by 38 feet, in which the work of cooperage generally is carried on. At one end is erected the boiler-house, in which is a Cornish boiler, 26 feet by 6 feet 6 inches diameter, with the usual tanks and donkey-pumps.

Adjoining the end of the boiler-house is the steaming-house, where the barrels are first steamed and then dried. At the south end of the cooperage the empty barrels are stored in the yard, from which they are taken to be cleaned and repaired prior to being sent to the filling-house.

The details of the plant are as follows :-

Figures 14 and 15 provide a detailed layout of the system described below.

At the end of the boiler-house, Figs. 14 and 15, Plate 8, there is a large air-heating chamber filled with a coil of small pipes supplied with steam from the boiler. This chamber is connected with the blower by the pipe A A, which enters it at the bottom and passes out at the top and down to the ground by the pipes B B B, and is connected with the main air-pipe laid underground along the side of the steaming-and drying-house.

Three branches are taken from this main air-pipe at C C C, leading into the three underground pipes D D D, from which are taken short branches E E E E of 1-inch pipe, about 2 feet apart, and spaced so as to exactly fit the bung-holes of the barrels,which are placed over them in three nests of eight barrels each.