All the above applications of this principle—"the division of the mass"—have been tested experimentally, the last named by the model above referred to. The clutch arrangement has transmitted six horse power from a petroleum motor, making 200 revolutions a minute, to a dynamo making 2,000 revolutions, while applications to industrial purposes are now being made, both in this country and in Belgium. The inventor of the system is M. Raymond Snyers, Ingénieur des Mines, du Génie Civil, et des Arts et Manufactures, of the Louvain University.—Journal of the Society of Arts.
STEAM GENERATOR OF SERPOLLET BROTHERS, PRODUCING STEAM INSTANTANEOUSLY.
The explosibility of a steam generator may be measured by the relation of its total capacity to its vaporizing power. The old fashioned generators and some of the modern ones are so constructed as to contain from fifteen to twenty times more water than they are able to vaporize within one hour. Thus a great quantity of heat is obtained and a uniform pressure assured, but the steam-generating apparatus is costly, heavy, and cumbersome; it requires a long time before the necessary pressure is obtained, and the generator is only suitable for a stationary installation and where it can uninterruptedly work for a long period of time. Besides, the enormous quantity of hot water under pressure constitutes a constant danger, and the explosion of a steam generator with boiler tubes becomes a real disaster.
In order to satisfy the requirements which have newly arisen in connection with navigation, locomotion, small motors and apparatus which need for their working an intermittent supply of steam, it became necessary to modify the construction of steam boilers, to augment their heating surface, to diminish their residue of water, and to gradually construct so-called inexplosible apparatus, of which the Belleville boiler forms one of the most characteristic prototypes.
In trying to reduce the inexplosibility to the utmost, Messrs. Serpollet Brothers have succeeded in constructing a type of boilers which may be called absolutely inexplosible, and this result has been obtained by reducing the capacity of the boiler to practically nil, thus rendering the explosibility also nil, for under the circumstances the relation between capacity and vaporizing power becomes itself nil.
Fig. 1.—INSTANTANEOUS VAPORIZATION BOILER OF MESSRS. SERPOLLET.
1. General view of boiler (experimental arrangement).
2. Cross section of boiler (natural size). The line A B indicates, at somewhat exaggerated scale, the cross section of the interior empty space of the boiler.
The method employed for this purpose by Messrs. Serpollet is an extremely simple one. A cylindrical steel tube of convenient diameter and sufficient thickness is rolled flat at a temperature below the white heat of the metal, and the last touch of the rollers is given to it when already cold. By this means a flat tube is obtained, the empty interior space of which looks in a cross section (Fig. 1, No. 2) like a black line not thicker than a hair, and measures from 0.1 to 0.3 millimeter. This tube is finally rolled up in the form of a spiral, or left straight, according to the use to be made of it, and put into an appropriate furnace (Fig. 1, No. 1). To either end of the tube a joint is attached, the one for the purpose of admitting the water, the other for admitting the steam.