Practical Hand Book of Gas, Oil and Steam Engines: Stationary, Marine, Traction; Gas Burners, Oil Burners, Etc.; Farm, Traction, Automobile, Locomotive; A simple, practical and comprehensive book on the construction, operation and repair of all kinds of engines. Dealing with the various parts in detail and the various types of engines and also the use of different kinds of fuel.Rathbun, John B.
Science
Practical Hand Book of Gas, Oil and Steam Engines: Stationary, Marine, Traction; Gas Burners, Oil Burners, Etc.; Farm, Traction, Automobile, Locomotive; A simple, practical and comprehensive book on the construction, operation and repair of all kinds of engines. Dealing with the various parts in detail and the various types of engines and also the use of different kinds of fuel.
Rathbun, John B.
Internal combustion engines; Traction-engines
The turbine in general arrangement outwardly resembles the Curtis steam
turbine, in that the turbine wheel rotates in a horizontal plane, the
spindle or shaft is vertical and a dynamo is mounted on this spindle
above the turbine. In the Holzwarth turbine ten combustion chambers are
provided, each of a pear or bag shape. They are arranged in a circle
around the wheel, and are cast so as to form the base of the machine.
The wheel is of the Curtis type, with two rows of moving and one row of
stationary blades.
In this turbine the energy of the fuel is liberated intermittently by
successive explosions, instead of by continuous combustion, and in much
the same way that the explosions occur in a reciprocating engine. Tests
made on the new machine have shown that it is in no way inferior in
efficiency to the ordinary type of motor, and that at full load, the
weight per horse-power is only about one-quarter of that of the
reciprocating engine. The weight factor, as is well known, is of the
utmost importance in marine service and should prove of value to the
marine engineer, if this alone were its only characteristic.
Any of the ordinary power gases may be used with success, as well as
vaporized liquid fuels, and the lower grade oils such as crude and
kerosene have given much better results in the turbine, than in
reciprocating engines, even at this early stage of its development. As
the heat losses are much smaller than met with in ordinary practice, the
temperature is higher, which, of course, greatly facilitates the
vaporization of the lower grade liquids.
Mr. Holzwarth does not give the dimensions of his turbine wheel, but
from the drawings and some of the velocities given by him it appears to
be about 1 m. in external diameter. The lower part of each combustion
chamber carries gas and air inlet valves, and the upper part carries a
nozzle arranged to cause the gases to impinge upon the first row of
moving blades. This nozzle is connected to and disconnected from the
combustion chamber by means of an ingeniously operated valve. The
explosion chambers are charged with a mixture of gas and air, which
appears to attain a pressure of about two atmospheres within the chamber
before explosion. The air and gas are supplied under sufficient pressure
from turbine compressors, actuated by steam raised from the waste heat
of the explosion and the gases of combustion, so that whatever work is
done in compression is obtained by this regenerative action, and does
not put any negative work upon the turbine itself. The combustion
chambers are fired in series, by means of high-tension jump spark
ignition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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