Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881

by Various

The second marine engine to which I wish to call your attention is one that has been made with a view to great economy. The principles followed in its construction are among those suggested by the President (Sir W.G. Armstrong) in his address. He (you will remember) pointed out that the direction in which economy in the steam engine was to be looked for was that of increasing the initial pressure; although at the same time he said that there were drawbacks in the shape of greater loss, by radiation, and by the higher temperature at which the products of combustion will escape. We must admit the fact of the latter source of loss, when using very high steam, it being inevitable that temperature of the products of combustion escaping from a boiler under these conditions must be higher than those which need be allowed to escape when lower steam is employed; although I regret to say that in practice in marine boilers working at comparatively low pressures the products are ordinarily suffered to pass into the funnel at above the temperature of melted lead. But with respect to the loss by radiation in the particular engine I am about to mention—that of Perkins—there is not as much loss as that which prevails in the ordinary marine boilers, because the Perkins boiler is completely inclosed, with the result that while there is within the case a boiler containing steam of 400 lb. on the square inch, and the fire to generate that steam, the hand may be applied to the casting itself, which contains the whole of the boiler, without receiving any unpleasant sensation of warmth. By Mr. Perkins's arrangement, using steam of 400 lb. in the boiler, it was found, as the result of very severe trials, conducted by Mr. Rich, of Messrs. Easton and Anderson's firm, and myself—trials which lasted for twelve hours—that the total consumption of fuel, including that for getting up steam from cold water, was just under 1.8, actually 1.79 lb. per gross indicated horse-power per hour. That gross indicated horse-power was obtained in a manner which it is desirable should always be employed in steamboat trials. It was not got by using as a divisor the horse-power of the most favorable diagram obtained during the day; but it was got from diagrams taken during the regular work; then, every half-hour, when the pressure began to die down, from coal being no longer put upon the fire, diagrams taken every quarter of an hour, and then toward the last, every five minutes; and the total number of foot pounds were calculated from these diagrams, and were used to obtain the gross indicated horse-power.

Further, so far as could be ascertained by the process of commencing a trial with a known fire, and closing that trial at the end of six hours, with the fire as nearly as possible in the same condition, the consumption was 1.66 lb. of coal per gross indicated horse-power per hour. So that, without taking into account the coal consumed in raising steam from cold water, the engine worked for 1-2/3 lb. of coal per horse per hour. I think it well to give these details, because undoubtedly it is an extremely economical result.

ETHER ENGINE.

Our president alluded to the employment of ether as a means of utilizing the heat which escaped into the condenser, and gave some account of what was done by Mons. Du Tremblay in this direction. It so happened that I had occasion to investigate the matter at the time of Du Tremblay's experiments; very little was effected here in England, one difficulty being the excise interference with the manufacture of ether. Chloroform was used here, and it was also suggested to employ bisulphide of carbon. In France, however, a great deal was done. Four large vessels were fitted with the ether engines, and I went over to Marseilles to see them at work. I took diagrams from these engines, and there is no doubt that, by this system, the exhaust steam from the steam cylinder, which was condensed by the application of ether to the surface of the steam condenser (producing a respectable vacuum of about 22 inches), gave an ether pressure of 15 lb. on the square inch above atmosphere, and very economical results as regards fuel were obtained. The scheme was, however, abandoned from practical difficulties. It need hardly be said that ether vapor is very difficult to deal with, and although ether is light, the vapor is extremely heavy, and if there is any leakage, it goes down into the bilges by gravitation, and being mixed with air, unless due care is taken to prevent access to the flues, there would be a constant risk of a violent explosion. In fact, it was necessary to treat the engine room in the way in which a fiery colliery would be treated. The lighting, for instance, was by lamps external to the engine room, and shining through thick plate-glass. The hand lamps were Davy's. The ether engine was a bold experiment in applied science, and one that entitles Du Tremblay's name to be preserved, and to be mentioned as it was by our president.

THE QUICKSILVER ENGINE.

These was another kind of marine engine that I think should not be passed over without notice; I allude to Howard's quicksilver engine. The experiments with this engine were persevered in for some considerable time, and it was actually used for practical purposes in propelling a passenger steam-vessel called the Vesta, and running between London and Ramsgate. In that engine the boiler had a double bottom, containing an amalgam of quicksilver and lead. This amalgam served as a reservoir of heat, which it took up from the fire below the double-bottom, and gave forth at intervals to the water above it. There was no water in the boiler, in the ordinary sense of the term, but when steam was wanted to start the engine, a small quantity of water was injected by means of a hand-pump, and after the engine was started, there was pumped by it into the boiler, at each half revolution, as much water as would make the steam needed. This water was flashed on the top surface of the reservoir in which the amalgam was confined, and was entirely turned into steam, the object of the engineers in charge being to send in so much water as would just generate the steam, but so as not to leave any water in the boiler. The engines of the Vesta were made by Mr. Penn, for Mr. Howard, of the King and Queen Ironworks, Rotherhithe. Mr. Howard was, I fear, a considerable loser by his meritorious efforts to improve the steam-engine.

There was used, with this engine, an almost unknown mode of obtaining fresh water for the boiler. Fresh water, it will be seen was a necessity in this mode of evaporation. The presence of salt, or of any other impurity, when the whole of the water was flashed into steam, must have caused a deposit on the top of the amalgam chamber at each operation. Fresh water, therefore, was needed; the problem arose how to get it; and that problem was solved, not by the use of surface condensation, but by the employment of reinjection, that is to say, the water delivered from the hot well was passed into pipes external to the vessel; after traversing them, it came back into the injection tank sufficiently cooled to be used again. The boilers were worked by coke fires, urged by a fan blast in their ashpits, but I am not aware that this mode of firing was a needful part of the system.

LOCOMOTIVE ENGINES.

I come now to the engines used for railways. At the British Association meeting of 1831, the Manchester and Liverpool Railway had been opened only about a year. The Stockton and Darlington coal line, it is true, had carried passengers by steam power as early as 1825, but I think we may look upon the Manchester and Liverpool as being the beginning of the passenger and mercantile railway system of the present day. At that time the locomotives weighed from eight to ten tons, and the speed was about 20 miles per hour, with a pressure of from 40 to 50 lb. The rails were light; they were jointed in the chairs, which were generally carried on stone blocks, thus affording most excellent anvils for the battering to pieces of the ends of the rails—that is to say, for the destruction of the very parts where they were most vulnerable. The engines were not competent to draw heavy trains, and it was a common practice to have at the foot of an incline a shed containing a "bank engine," which ran out after the trains as they passed, and pushed them up to the top of the hill. Injectors were then unknown, and donkey-pumps were unknown, and therefore, when it was necessary to fill up the boiler, if it had not been properly pumped up before the locomotive came to rest, it had to run about the line in order to work its feed-pumps. To get over this difficulty, it was occasionally the practice to insert into a line of rails, in a siding, a pair of wheels, with their tops level with that of the rails so that the engine wheels could run upon the rims. Then, the locomotive being fixed to prevent it from moving off the pair of wheels thus endways, it was put into revolution, its driving wheels bearing, as already stated, upon the rims of the pair of wheels in the rails, and thus the engine worked its feed-pumps without interfering (by its needless running up and down the line) with the traffic. It should have been stated, that at this time there was no link motion, no practical expansion of the steam, and that even the reversal of the engine had to be effected by working the sides by hand gear, in the manner in use in marine engines. When the British Association originated, although the Manchester and Liverpool Railway had been opened for a year, there is no doubt that the 300 members who then came to this city found their way here by the slow process of the stage-coach, the loss of which we so much deplore in the summer and in fine weather, but the obligatory use of which we should so much regret in the miserable weather now prevailing in these islands.

In 1881, we know that railways are everywhere inserted. Steel rails, double the weight of the original iron ones, are used. Wooden sleepers have replaced the stone blocks, and they, in their turn, will probably give way to sleepers of steel. The joints are now made by means of fish-plates, and the most vulnerable part of the rail, the end, is no longer laid on an anvil for a purpose of being smashed to pieces, but the ends of the rails are now almost always over a void, and thereby are not more affected by wear than is any other part of the rail. The speed is now from 50 to 60 miles an hour for passenger trains, while slow speed goods engines, weighing 45 tons, draw behind them coal trains of 800 tons. The injector is now commonly employed, and, by its aid, a careful driver of the engine of a stopping train can fill up his boiler while at rest at the stations. The link motion is in common use, to which, no doubt, is owing the very considerable economy with which the locomotive engine now works.