The Steam Engine Familiarly Explained and Illustrated / With an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain axioms for railway speculators

by Dionysius Lardner

The following are the advantages, as stated by Mr. Hall, to be gained by his condenser:—

1. A saving of fuel, amounting in some cases to so much as a third of the ordinary consumption.

2. The preservation of the boilers from the destruction produced in common engines by the corrosive action of sea or other impure water, and by encrustations of earthy matter.

3. The saving of the time spent in cleaning the boilers.

4. A considerable increase of power, owing to the cleanness of the boilers; the absence of injected water to be pumped out of a vacuum; the greater perfection of the vacuum; the better preservation of the piston and valves of the air-pump; and (by another contrivance of his) the more perfect lubrication of the parts of the engine.

5. The water in the boiler being constantly maintained at the same height by self-acting arrangement.

6. The size of a boiler exerting a given power, being much smaller than the common kind, owing to its more perfect action.

Messrs. Lloyd and Kingston were employed by government to examine and report the effects of Mr. Hall's boilers, and they stated in their report, already referred to, that the result is so successful as to leave nothing to be wished for. Among the advantages which they enumerate are the increased durability of the engines; the prevention of accidents through carelessness, or otherwise, arising from the condenser and air-pump becoming choked with injection water; and the additional security against the boilers being burnt in consequence of the water being suffered to get too low. But the greatest advantages, compared with which they consider all others to be of secondary importance, are the increased durability of the boilers and the saving of fuel.

About 16 engines, built either wholly upon Mr. Hall's principle or having his condenser attached to them, have now (October, 1835) been working in different parts of England, and on board different vessels for various periods, from three years to three months; and it appears from the concurrent testimony of the proprietors and managers of them, that they are attended with all the advantages which the patentee engaged for. The part of the contrivance the performance of which would have appeared most doubtful would have been the maintenance of a sufficiently good vacuum in the condenser, in the absence of the usual method of condensation by the injection of cold water; nevertheless it appears that a better vacuum is sustained in these engines than in the ordinary engines which condense by jet. The barometer-gauge varies from 29 to 29-1/2 inches, and in some cases comes up to 30 inches, according to the state of the barometer: this is a vacuum very nearly perfect, and indeed may be said to be so for all practical purposes. The Prince Llewellyn and the Air steam packets, belonging to the St. George Steam Packet Company, have worked such a pair of these engines for about a year. The City of London steam packet, the property of the General Steam Navigation Company, has been furnished with two fifty-horse engines, and has worked them during the same period. In all cases the boilers have been found perfectly free from scale or incrustation; and the deposite is either absolutely nothing or very trifling, requiring the boiler to be swept about once in half a year, and sometimes not so often. The trial which has been made of these engines in the navy has proved satisfactory, so far as it has been carried. The Lords of the Admiralty have lately ordered a pair of seventy-horse engines to be constructed on this principle for a vessel now (October, 1835) in process of construction;[36] and another vessel in all respects similar, except having copper boilers, is likewise ordered; so that a just comparison may be made. It would, however, have been more fair if both vessels had been provided with iron boilers, since copper does not receive incrustation as readily as iron.

It would seem that the advantages of these boilers in the vessels of the St. George Steam Packet Company were regarded by the directors as sufficiently evident, since, after more than a year's experience, they are about to place a pair of ninety-horse engines of this kind in a new and powerful steamer called the Hercules.