The Steam Engine Familiarly Explained and Illustrated: With an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain axioms for railway speculatorsLardner, Dionysius
History
The Steam Engine Familiarly Explained and Illustrated: With an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain axioms for railway speculators
Lardner, Dionysius
Steam-engines -- Early works to 1850
(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 cool 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
begin to act until a quantity of hot water, formed by condensed steam,
is collected on the surface of the cold water which fills the vessel V
V´. 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 vessel 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 water in F, and in producing a vacuum, bears a very small
proportion indeed to what is consumed in heating the apparatus after
condensation.
[Illustration: Pl. I.]
(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 68 feet
of water. Steam is therefore required of a pressure of 45lbs. 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° (17.),
even so high as 267°; 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.
Besides the drainage of mines, Savery proposed to apply his steam
engine to a variety of other purposes; such as supplying cities with
water, forming ornamental waterworks in pleasure grounds, turning
mills, &c.
Savery was the first who suggested the method of expressing the power
of an engine with reference to that of horses. In this comparison,
however, he supposed each horse to work but 8 hours a day, while the
engine works for 24 hours. This method of expressing the power of
steam engines will be explained hereafter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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