Improved Condensers.
By an improved design Professor R. L. Weighton of Armstrong College, Newcastle-on-Tyne, has doubled the efficiency of the surface condenser, and reduced its consumption of water 44 per cent. In his apparatus the condensing water enters at the base, and leaves at the top, after several circuits instead of but two as in the ordinary condenser. This new apparatus is drained off in sections, instead of allowing the condensed steam to accumulate at the bottom, as in common practice. This sectional drainage is effected by dividing the interior into diaphragms somewhat inclined to the horizontal, so that the water of condensation is removed as fast as formed and does not flow from the upper tubes over those beneath. The gain in this arrangement arises from the fact that the greater part of the condensation takes place in the upper part of a condenser, where the steam impinges first upon the tubes. The Weighton apparatus, in conjunction with dry air-pumps, shows a condensation of 36 pounds of steam per square foot of surface per hour, with a reduction of pressure to one twentieth of barometric pressure (11⁄2 inches as compared with 30), using as condensing water 28 times as much as the feed water, at an inlet temperature of 50° Fahr.
POWER-HOUSE, INTERBOROUGH RAPID TRANSIT CO.,
11th Avenue and 59th Street, New York.
Showing group of Allis-Chalmers steam-engines.