The condenso-purifier shown in the accompanying cut operates as follows: Water is caused to flow over a metallic plate perforated with innumerable holes of from one to three millimeters in diameter, and then, under this disk, which is exactly horizontal, a current of gas is introduced. Under these circumstances the liquid does not traverse the holes in the plate, but is supported by the gas coming in an opposite direction. Provided that the gas has sufficient pressure, it bubbles up through the water and becomes so much the more divided in proportion as the holes are smaller and more numerous.
The gas is washed by traversing the liquid, and freed from the tar and coal-dust carried along with it; while, at the same time, the ammonia that it contains dissolves in the water, and this, too, so much the better the colder the latter is. This apparatus, then, permits of obtaining two results: a mechanical one, consisting in the stoppage of the solid matters, and a chemical one, consisting in the stoppage of the soluble portions, such as ammonia, sulphureted hydrogen, and carbonic acid.

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