What are the 10 most common uses of carbon monoxide gas by small
businesses (ie what are the 10 most common reasons small businesses
would use carbon monoxide gas).

The following are the major industrial uses of carbon monoxide:

[1]  Fuel gas mixtures
      - water gas (44% carbon monoxide)
      - blast furnace gas (30% carbon monoxide)
      - producer gas (34% carbon monoxide)
      - coal gas or illuminating gas (7.4% carbon monoxide)

[2]  Chemical manufacturing
      - methanol
      - formaldehyde
      - other alcohols and aldehydes
      - ethylene
      - acids
      - esters
      - hydroxy acids
      - aryl esters
      - carboxylic anhydrides
      - amides
      - acrylic acid

[3]  Recovery of metals from ores
      - nickel, cobalt

[4]  Production of powdered metals of high purity

[5]  Production of special steels

[6]  Production of reducing oxides

[7]  Powder metallurgy for molding

[8]  Research 

[9]  Teaching

[10] Manufacture of metal carbonyl catalysts used in
      - hydrocarbon synthesis
      - hydrogenation of fats and oils

Source:
Industrial Accident Prevention Association
Carbon Monoxide in the Workplace
http://www.iapa.ca/pdf/carbon_monoxide_feb2003.pdf

Additional information:

"CO is very important in industry, since it is a precursor to a number
of important organic chemicals. A mixture of CO and H2 is called
synthesis gas, and is used both for the synthesis of methanol and in
the 'hydroformylation reaction', in which a H atom and a formyl group
(HCO) are inserted into the double bond of an alkene to form an
aldehyde. This can be further reduced to an alcohol. Cobalt compounds
are often used as catalysts for this process at temperatures of around
150°C and >200 atmospheres pressure. Several million tonnes of C7-C9
alcohols are produced in this way each year.

Another important commercial process involving CO is the carbonylation
of methanol to give acetic acid using a rhodium catalyst in the
presence of iodide ions."

Imperial College: Carbon Monoxide
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/mim/environmental/html/co_text.htm

"Carbon Monoxide is used in metallurgy, manufacturing acids, chemical
industry, lasers and laboratory R&D. Carbon Monoxide is also used as a
gas additive in various semiconductor fluorocarbon processes and as a
feed gas for semiconductor dry etching."

Spectra Gases: Carbon Monoxide
http://www.spectra-gases.com/Semiconductor/cocopy2/carbon.htm

"Carbon monoxide (CO) can be used by food manufacturers to retain the
red color of meat or dark fish prior to vacuum packaging or in the
modified atmosphere packaging."

Blackwell Synergy: EFFECT OF HEATING ON RESIDUAL CARBON MONOXIDE
CONTENT IN CO-TREATED TUNA AND MYOGLOBIN
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1745-4514.2004.05303.x/abs/;jsessionid=ko9MtDsXGip8

This is not exactly an industrial use, but it is interesting:

"The ubiquitous carbon monoxide molecule, CO, is used by astronomers
to trace the presence and temperature of molecular gas in everything
from galaxies to circumstellar disks. We would rather try to detect
H2, but sadly H2 has no permanent electric dipole moment because of
its symmetry. Carbon monoxide does have a permanent dipole moment."

University of California - Berkeley: Astro 201 - Radiative Processes
http://astron.berkeley.edu/~echiang/rad/ps3.pdf

My Google search strategy:

Google Web Search: "uses of carbon monoxide"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22uses+of+carbon+monoxide%22

Google Web Search: "carbon monoxide is used" 
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22carbon+monoxide+is+used%22+

Google Web Search: "carbon monoxide" "industrial uses"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22carbon+monoxide%22+%22industrial+uses%22

I hope this is useful. If anything is unclear or incomplete, please
request clarification; I'll be glad to offer further assistance before
you rate my answer.

Best regards,
pinkfreud

---

Clarification of Answer by pinkfreud-ga on 14 Mar 2005 17:31 PST

Regarding the use of carbon monoxide in small businesses, the
information posted above is as applicable to small businesses as to
large ones. This is the kind of product whose use is more related to
the type of business than to the size of the business. For instance,
there are many small gas processing firms that might use CO, and there
are many large accounting firms that might use none. It's not the size
of the business that determines the usage, but what the business is
doing.

~pinkfreud