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
They were, therefore, necessarily very limited in their
dimensions, and were incapable of raising the water with
sufficient speed. Hence arose a necessity for several engines at
each level, which greatly increased the expense.
(35.) These, however, were not the only defects of Savery's
engines. The consumption of fuel was enormous, the proportion of
heat wasted being much more than what was used in either forcing
up the water, or producing a _vacuum_. This will be very easily
understood by attending to the process of working the engine
already described.
When the steam is first introduced from the boiler into the steam
vessels V V′, preparatory to the formation of a vacuum, it is
necessary that it should heat these vessels up to the temperature
of the steam itself; for until then the steam will be condensed
the moment it enters the vessel by the cold surface. All this
heat, therefore, spent in raising the temperature of the steam
vessels is wasted. Again, when the water has ascended and filled
the vessels V V′, and steam is introduced to force this water
through B B′ into F, it is immediately condensed by the cold
surface in V V′, and does not [Pg061] begin to act until a
quantity of hot water, formed by condensed steam, is collected on
the surface of the cold water which fills these vessels. Hence
another source of the waste of heat arises.
When the steam begins to act upon the surface of the water in V
V′, and to force it down, the cold surface of the vessels is
gradually exposed to the steam, and must be heated while the steam
continues its action; and when the water has been forced out of
the vessel, the vessel itself has been heated to the temperature
of the steam which fills it, all which heat is dissipated by the
subsequent process of condensation. It must thus be evident that
the steam used in forcing up the the water in F, and in producing
a vacuum, bears a very small proportion indeed to what is consumed
in heating the apparatus after condensation.
(36.) There is also another circumstance which increases the
consumption of fuel. The water must be forced through B, not only
against the atmospheric pressure, but also against a column of
sixty-eight feet of water. Steam is therefore required of a
pressure of forty-five pounds on the square inch. Consequently the
water in the boiler must be boiled under this pressure. That this
should take place, it is necessary that the water should be raised
to a temperature considerably above 212°, even so high as 275°;
and thus an increased heat must be given to the boiler.
Independently of the other defects, this intense heat weakened and
gradually destroyed the apparatus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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