Every-day Science: Volume 6. The Conquest of Nature

by Henry Smith Williams; Edward Huntington Williams

OLD IDEAS AND NEW APPLIED TO BOILER CONSTRUCTION.

The lower figure shows Robert Trevithick's famous boiler, used in operating his locomotive about the year 1804. The original is preserved in the South Kensington Museum, London. The upper figure shows a modern tubular boiler, by way of contrast.

It will be understood from what has been said before, that with all accessions of heat, the expansive power of the vapor is increased,—its molecules becoming increasingly active; hence one of the very obvious advantages of super-heated steam for the purpose of pushing a piston. There are other advantages, however, which are not at first sight so apparent, having to do with the properties of condensation. To understand these, we must pay heed for a few moments to the changes that take place in steam itself in the course of its passage through the cylinder, where it performs its work upon the piston.

Many of these changes were not fully understood by the earlier experimenters, including Watt. Indeed the theory of the steam engine, or rather the general theory of the heat engine, was not worked out until the year 1824, when the Frenchman Carnot took the subject in hand, and performed a series of classical experiments, which led to a nearly complete theoretical exposition of the subject. It remained, however, for the students of thermo-dynamics, about the middle of the nineteenth century, with Clausius and Rankine at their head, to perfect the theory of the steam engine, and the general subject of the mutual relations of heat and mechanical work.

We are not here concerned with any elaboration of details, but merely with a few of the essential principles which enter practically into the operation of the steam engine. It appears, then, that when steam enters the cylinder and begins to thrust back the piston of the steam engine, a portion of the steam is immediately condensed on the walls of the cylinder, owing to the fact that previous condensation of steam has cooled these walls to a certain extent. We have already pointed out that Watt endeavored in his earlier experiments to overcome this difficulty, by equalizing the temperature of the cylinder walls to the greatest practicable extent.

Notwithstanding his efforts, however, and those of numberless later experimenters, it still remains true that under ordinary conditions, particularly if steam enters the cylinder at the saturation point, a very considerable condensation occurs. Indeed this may amount to from thirty to fifty per cent. of the entire bulk of water contained in the quantity of steam that enters the cylinder. This condensation obviously militates against the expansive or working power of the steam. But now as the steam expands, pushing forward the cylinder, it becomes correspondingly rarefied, and immediately a portion of the condensed steam becomes again vaporized, and in so doing it takes up a certain amount of heat and renders it latent. This disadvantageous cycle of molecular transformations is very much modified in the case of super-heated steam, for the obvious reason that such steam may be very much below the saturation point, and hence requires a very much greater lowering of temperature in order to produce condensation of any portion of its mass. Without elaborating details, it suffices to note that in all highly efficient modern engines, steam is employed at a relatively high pressure, and that sometimes this pressure becomes enormous.

COMPOUND ENGINES

As to the compound engine, that also, as has been pointed out, was invented by a contemporary of Watt, Jonathan Hornblower by name, whose patent bears date of 1781. In Hornblower's engine, steam was first admitted to a small cylinder, and then, after performing its work on the piston, was allowed to escape, not into a condensing receptacle, but into a larger cylinder where it performed further work upon another piston. This was obviously an instance of the use of steam expansively, and it has been pointed out that, in consequence, Hornblower was the first to make use of this idea in practise, although it is said that Watt's experiments had even at that time covered this field. The application of the idea to the movement of the second cylinder, however, appears to have been original with Hornblower. Certainly it owed nothing to Watt, who refused to accept the idea, and continued throughout his life to frown upon the compound engine.

Nevertheless, the device had great utility, as subsequent experiments were very fully to demonstrate. The compound engine was revived by Woolf in 1804, and his name rather than Hornblower's is commonly associated with it. The latter experimenter demonstrated that the compound engine has two important merits as against the simple engine. One of these is that the sum of the two forces exerted by the joint action results in a more even and continuous pressure throughout the cycle than could be accomplished by the action of a single cylinder.