The Steam Engine Explained and Illustrated (Seventh Edition): With an Account of Its Invention and Progressive Improvement, and Its Application to Navigation and Railways; Including Also a Memoir of WattLardner, Dionysius
History
The Steam Engine Explained and Illustrated (Seventh Edition): With an Account of Its Invention and Progressive Improvement, and Its Application to Navigation and Railways; Including Also a Memoir of Watt
Lardner, Dionysius
Steam-engines; Watt, James, 1736-1819
To explain the circumstances out of which these properties arise,
let B (_fig._ 29.) be imagined to be a vessel filled with water,
communicating by a pipe and stopcock with another vessel A, which
in the commencement of the process may be conceived to be filled
with air. Let D be a pipe and stopcock at the top of this vessel.
If the vessel B be heated, and the two cocks be opened, the steam
proceeding from the water in B will blow the air out of the vessel
A through the open stopcock D, in the same manner as air is blown
from a steam engine. When the vessel A by these means has been
filled with pure steam, let both stopcocks be closed. If the steam
in A, under these circumstances, have a pressure of 15 lbs. per
square inch, its temperature will be found to be 213°. Now, if any
heat be abstracted from this steam, its temperature will fall, and
a portion of it will be reconverted into water.
Again, suppose the vessel A to be filled with pure steam which has
been produced from the heated water in B, the stopcock C being
open. Let the stopcock C be then closed, and the water in B be
heated to a higher temperature, the temperature and pressure of
the steam in A being observed. If the stopcock C be now opened,
the steam in A will be immediately observed to rise to the more
elevated temperature which has been imparted to the water in B,
and at the same time it will acquire an increased pressure.
[Pg169]
The increase of temperature which it has received would of itself
produce an increased pressure; but that this is not the sole cause
of the augmented pressure in the present case might be proved by
weighing the vessel A. It would be found to have increased weight,
which could only arise from its having received from the water in
B an additional quantity of vapour. The increased pressure
therefore, which the steam in A has acquired, is due conjointly to
its increased density and its increased temperature. In general,
if the water in the vessel B be raised or lowered in temperature,
the steam in the vessel A will rise and fall in temperature in a
corresponding manner, always having the same temperature as the
water in B. If the weight of the vessel A were observed, it would
be found to increase with every increase of temperature, and to
diminish with every diminution of temperature, proving that the
augmented temperature of the water in B produces an augmented
density of the steam in A. The same pressure would be found always
to correspond to the same temperature and density, so that if the
numerical amount of any one of the three quantities, the
temperature, the pressure, or the density, were known, the other
two must necessarily be determined, the same temperature always
corresponding to the same pressure, and _vice versâ_. And in like
manner, steam produced under these circumstances of the same
density cannot have different pressures. It must be observed that
the steam here produced receives all the heat which it possesses
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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