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
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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
When this has taken place, suppose the regulator be moved so as to
close the communication between the tube T and the boiler, and to
stop the further supply of steam to the vessel V; and at the same
time let the condensing pipe G be brought over the vessel V, and
the cock opened so as to let a stream of cold water flow upon it.
This will cool the vessel V, and the steam with which it is filled
will be condensed and fall in a few drops of water, leaving the
interior of the vessel a vacuum. The valve B will be kept closed
by the atmospheric pressure. But the elastic force of the air
between the valve A and the surface of the water in the well, or
reservoir, will open A, so that a part of this air will rush in,
and occupy the vessel V. The air in the suction pipe S, being thus
allowed an increased space, will be proportionally diminished in
its elastic force, and its pressure will no longer balance that of
the atmosphere acting on the external surface of the water in the
reservoir. This pressure will, therefore, force water up in the
tube S until its weight, together with the elastic force of the
air above it, balances the atmospheric pressure. When this has
taken place, the water will cease to ascend.
Let us now suppose that, by shifting the regulator, the
communication is opened between T and the boiler, so that steam
flows again into V. The condensing cock G being removed, the
vessel will be again heated as before, the air expelled, and its
place filled by the steam. The condensing pipe being again allowed
to play upon the vessel V, and the further supply of steam being
stopped, a vacuum will be produced in V, and the atmospheric
pressure will force the water through the valve A into the vessel
V, which it will nearly fill, a small quantity of air, however,
remaining above it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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