A History of the Growth of the Steam-Engine Part 33

_THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE STEAM-ENGINE._

ITS APPLICATION; ITS TEACHINGS RESPECTING THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE ENGINE AND ITS IMPROVEMENT.

"Oftentimes an Uncertaintie hindered our going on so merrily, but by persevering the Difficultie was mastered, and the new Triumph gave stronger Heart unto us."--RALEIGH.

"If everything which we cannot comprehend is to be called an impossibility, how many are daily presented to our eyes! and in contemning as false that which we consider to be impossible, may we not be depreciating a giant's effort to give an importance to our own weakness?"--MONTAIGNE.

"They who aim vigorously at perfection will come nearer to it than those whose laziness or despondency makes them give up its pursuit from the feeling of its being unattainable."--CHESTERFIELD.

As has been already stated, the steam-engine is a machine which is especially designed to transform energy, originally dormant or potential, into active and usefully available kinetic energy.

When, millions of years ago, in that early period which the geologists call the carboniferous, the kinetic energy of the sun's rays, and of the glowing interior of the earth, was expended in the decomposition of the vast volumes of carbonic acid with which air was then charged, and in the production of a life-sustaining atmosphere and of the immense forests which then covered the earth with their almost inconceivably luxuriant vegetation, there was stored up for the benefit of the human race, then uncreated, an inconceivably great treasure of potential energy, which we are now just beginning to utilize. This potential energy becomes kinetic and available wherever and whenever the powerful chemical affinity of oxygen for carbon is permitted to come into play; and the fossil fuel stored in our coal-beds or the wood of existing forests is, by the familiar process of combustion, permitted to return to the state of combination with oxygen in which it existed in the earliest geological periods.

The philosophy of the steam-engine, therefore, traces the changes which occur from this first step, by which, in the furnace of the steam-boiler, this potential energy which exists in the tendency of carbon and oxygen to combine to form carbonic acid is taken advantage of, and the utilizable kinetic energy of heat is produced in equivalent amount, to the final application of resulting mechanical energy to machinery of transmission, through which it is usefully applied to the elevation of water, to the driving of mills and machinery of all kinds, or to the hauling of "lightning" trains on our railways, or to the propulsion of the Great Eastern.

The kinetic heat-energy developed in the furnace of the steam-boiler is partly transmitted through the metallic walls which inclose the steam and water within the boiler, there to evaporate water, and to a.s.sume that form of energy which exists in steam confined under pressure, and is partly carried away into the atmosphere in the discharged gaseous products of combustion, serving, however, a useful purpose, _en route_, by producing the draught needed to keep up combustion.

The steam, with its store of heat-energy, pa.s.ses through tortuous pipes and pa.s.sages to the steam-cylinder of the engine, losing more or less heat on the way, and there expands, driving the piston before it, and losing heat by the transformation of that form of energy while doing mechanical work of equivalent amount. But this steam-cylinder is made of metal, a material which is one of the best conductors of heat, and therefore one of the very worst possible substances with which to inclose anything as subtile and difficult of control as the heat pervading a condensible vapor like steam. The process of internal condensation and reevaporation, which is the great enemy of economical working, thus has full play, and is only partly checked by the heat from the steam-jacket, which, penetrating the cylinder, a.s.sists by keeping up the temperature of the internal surface and checking the first step, condensation, which is an essential preliminary to the final waste by reevaporation. The piston, too, is of metal, and affords a most excellent way of exit for the heat escaping to the exhaust side.

Finally, all unutilized heat rejected from the steam-cylinder is carried away from the machine, either by the water of condensation, or, in the non-condensing engine, by the atmosphere into which it is discharged.

Having traced the method of operation of the steam-engine, it is easy to discover what principles are comprehended in its philosophy, to learn what are known facts bearing upon its operation, and to determine what are the directions in which improvement must take place, what are the limits beyond which improvement cannot possibly be carried, and, in some directions, to determine what is the proper course to pursue in effecting improvements. The general direction of change in the past, as well as at present, is easily seen, and it may usually be a.s.sumed that there will be no immediate change of direction in a course which has long been preserved, and which is well defined.

We may, therefore, form an idea of the probable direction in which to look for improvement in the near future.

Reviewing the operations which go on in this machine during the process of transformation of energy which has been outlined, and studying it more in detail, we may deduce the principles which govern its design and construction, guide us in its management, and determine its efficiency.

In the furnace of the boiler, the quant.i.ty of heat developed in available form is proportional to the amount of fuel burned. It is available in proportion to the temperature attained by the products of combustion; were this temperature no higher than that of the boiler, the heat would all pa.s.s off unutilized. But the temperature produced by a given quant.i.ty of heat, measured in heat-units, is greater as the volume of gas heated is less. It follows that, at this point, therefore, the fuel should be perfectly consumed with the least possible air-supply, and the least possible abstraction of heat before combustion is complete. High temperature of furnace, also, favors complete combustion. We hence conclude that, in the steam-boiler furnace, fuel should be burned completely in a chamber having non-conducting walls, and with the smallest air-supply compatible with thorough combustion; and, further, that the air should be free from moisture, that greatest of all absorbents of heat, and that the products of combustion should be removed from the furnace before beginning to drain their heat into the boiler. A fire-brick furnace, a large combustion-chamber with thorough intermixture of gases within it, good fuel, and a restricted and carefully-distributed supply of air, seem to be the conditions which meet these requisites best.

The heat generated by combustion traverses the walls which separate the gases of the furnace from the steam and water confined within the boiler, and is then taken up by those fluids, raising their temperature from that of the entering "feed-water" to that due the steam-pressure, and expanding the liquid into steam occupying a greatly-increased volume, thus doing a certain amount of work, besides increasing temperature. The extent to which heat may thus be usefully withdrawn from the furnace-gases depends upon the conductivity of the metallic wall, the rate at which the water will take heat from the metal, and the difference of temperature on the two sides of the metal. Extended "heating-surface," therefore, a metal of high conducting power, and a maximum difference of temperature on the two sides of the separating wall of metal, are the essential conditions of economy here. The heating-surface is sometimes made of so great an area that the temperature of the escaping gases is too low to give good chimney-draught, and a "mechanical draught" is resorted to, revolving "fan-blowers" being ordinarily used for its production. It is most economical to adopt this method. The steam-boiler is generally constructed of iron--sometimes, but rarely, of cast-iron, although "steel," where not hard enough to harden or temper, is better in consequence of its greater strength and h.o.m.ogeneousness of structure, and its better conductivity. The maximum conductivity of flow of heat for any given material is secured by so designing the boiler as to secure rapid, steady, and complete circulation of the water within it.

The maximum rapidity of transfer throughout the whole area of heating-surface is secured, usually, by taking the feed-water into the boiler as nearly as possible at the point where the gases are discharged into the chimney-flue, withdrawing the steam nearer the point of maximum temperature of flues, and securing opposite directions of flow for the gases on the one side and the water on the other. Losses of heat from the boiler, by conduction and radiation to surrounding bodies, are checked as far as possible by non-conducting coverings.

The mechanical equivalent of the heat generated in the boiler is easily calculated when the conditions of working are known. A pound of pure carbon has been found to be capable of liberating by its perfect combustion, resulting in the formation of carbonic acid, 14,500 British thermal units, equivalent to 14,500 772 = 11,194,000 foot-pounds of work, and, if burned in one hour, to 11194000/1980000 = 5.6 horse-power. In other words, with perfect utilization, but 10/56 = 0.177, or about one-sixth, of a pound of carbon would be needed per hour for each horse-power of work done. But even good coal is not nearly all carbon, and has but about nine-tenths this heat-producing power, and it is usually rated as yielding about 10,000,000 foot-pounds of work per pound. The evaporative power of pure carbon being rated at 15 pounds of water, that of good coal may be stated at 13-1/2. In metric measures, one gramme of good coal should evaporate about 13-1/2 grammes of water from the boiling-point, producing the equivalent of about 3,000,000 kilogrammetres of work from the 7,272 _calories_ of heat thus generated. A gramme of pure carbon generates in its combustion 8,080 _calories_ of heat. Per hour and per horse-power, 0.08, or less than one-twelfth, of a kilogram of carbon burned per hour evolves heat-energy equal to one horse-power.

Of the coal burned in a steam-boiler, it rarely happens that more than three-fourths is utilized in making steam; 7,500,000 foot-pounds (1,036,898 kilogrammetres) is, therefore, as much energy as is usually sent to the engine per pound of good coal burned in the steam-boiler.

The "efficiency" of a good steam-boiler is therefore usually not far from 0.75 as a maximum. Rankine estimates this quant.i.ty for ordinary boilers of good design and with chimney-draught at

0.92 E = ------------; 1 + 0.5(F/S)

in which F/S is the ratio of weight of fuel burned per square foot of grate to the ratio of heating to grate surface; this is a formula of fairly close approximation for general practice.

The steam in the engine first drives the piston some distance before the induction or steam valve is closed, and it then expands, doing work, and condensing in proportion to work done as the expansion proceeds, until it is finally released by the opening of the exhaust or eduction valve. Saturated steam is modified in its action by a process which has already been described, condensing at the beginning and reevaporating at the end of the stroke, thus carrying into the condenser considerable quant.i.ties of heat which should have been utilized in the development of power. Whether this operation takes place in one cylinder or in several is only of importance in so far as it modifies the losses due to conduction and radiation of heat, to condensation and reevaporation of steam, and to the friction of the machine. It has already been seen how these losses are modified by the subst.i.tution of the compound for the single-cylinder engine.

The laws of thermo-dynamics teach, as has been stated, that the proportion of the heat-energy contained in the steam or other working fluid which may be transformed into mechanical energy is a fraction (H_{1} - H_{2})/H_{1}, of the total, in which H_{1} and H_{2} are the quant.i.ties of heat contained in the steam at the beginning and at the end of its operation, measuring from the absolute zero of heat-motion.

In perfect gases,

H_{1} - H_{2} [tau]_{1} - [tau]_{2} T_{1} - T_{2} ------------- = --------------------- = -------------------- H_{1} [tau]_{1} T_{1} + 461.2 Fahr.

but in imperfect gases, and especially in vapors which, like steam, condense, or otherwise change their physical state, this equality may still exist,

(H_{1} - H_{2})/H_{1} = ([tau]_{1} - [tau]_{2})/[tau]_{1};

and the fluid is equally efficient with the perfect gas as a working substance in a heat-engine. In any case it is seen that the efficiency is greatest when the whole of the heat is received at the maximum and rejected at the minimum attainable temperatures.

a.s.suming this expression strictly accurate, a hot-air engine working from 413.6 Fahr, or 874.8 absolute temperature, down to 122 Fahr, or 583.2 absolute, should have an efficiency of 0.263, transforming that proportion of available heat into mechanical work. The engines of the steamer Ericsson closely approached this figure, and gave a horse-power for each 1.87 pound of coal burned per hour.

Steam expands in the steam-cylinder quite differently under different circ.u.mstances. If no heat is either communicated to it or abstracted from it, however, it expands in an hyperbolic curve, losing its tension much more rapidly than when expanded without doing work, in consequence both of its change of volume and its condensation. The algebraic expression for this method of expansion is, according to Rankine, PV^{1.111} = C, a constant, or, according to other authorities, from PV^{1.135} = C to PV^{1.140} = C. The greater the value of the exponent of V, the greater the efficiency of the fluid between any two temperatures. The maximum value has been found to be given where the steam is saturated, but perfectly dry, at the commencement of its expansion. The loss due to condensation on the cooled interior surface of the cylinder at the commencement of the stroke and the subsequent reevaporation as expansion progresses is least when the cylinder is kept hot by its steam-jacket and when least time is given during the stroke for this transfer of heat between the metal and the vapor.

It may be said that, all things considered, therefore, losses of heat in the steam-cylinder are least when the steam enters dry, or moderately superheated, where the interior surfaces are kept hottest by the steam-jacket or by the hot-air jacket sometimes used, and where piston-speed and velocity of rotation are highest.[115] The best of compound engines, using steam of seventy-five pounds pressure and condensing, usually require about two pounds of coal per hour--20,000,000 foot-pounds of energy at the furnace--to develop a horse-power, i. e., about ten times the heat-equivalent of the mechanical work which they accomplish. Were the steam to expand like the permanent gases, they would have a theoretical efficiency of about one-quarter; actually, the efficiency is only one-tenth. The steam-engine, therefore, utilizes about two-fifths the heat-energy theoretically available with the best type of engine in general use.

By far the greater part, nearly all, in fact, of the nine-tenths wasted is rejected in the exhaust steam, and can only be saved by some such method as is hereafter to be suggested of retaining that heat and returning it to the boiler.

[115] In some cases, as in the Allen engine, the speed of piston has become very high, approaching 800((stroke)^{1/3}).

The mechanical power which has now been communicated to the mechanism of the engine by the transfer of the kinetic energy of the hot steam to the piston is finally usefully applied to whatever "mechanism of transmission" forms the connection with the machinery driven by the engine. In this transfer, there is some loss in the engine itself, by friction. This is an extremely variable amount, and it can be made very small by skillful design and good workmans.h.i.+p and management. It may be taken at one-half pound per square inch of piston for good engines of 100 horse-power and upward, but is often several pounds in very small engines. It is least when the rubbing surfaces are of different materials, but both of smooth, hard, close-grained metal, well lubricated, and where advantage is taken of any arrangement of parts which permits the equilibration of pressure, as on the shaft-bearings of double and triple engines. The friction of a steam-engine of large size and good design is usually between five and seven per cent. of its total power. It increases rapidly as the size of engine decreases.

Having now traced somewhat minutely the growth of the steam-engine from the beginning of the Christian era to the present time, having rapidly outlined the equally gradual, though intermittent, growth of its philosophy, and having shown how the principles of science find application in the operation of this wonderful machine, we are now prepared to study the conditions which control the intelligent designer, and to endeavor to learn what are the lessons taught us by science and by experience in regard to the essential requisites of efficient working of steam and economy in the consumption of fuel. We may even venture to point out definitely the direction in which improvement is now progressing as indicated by a study of these requisites, and may be able to perceive the natural limits to such progress, and possibly to conjecture what must be the character of that change of type which only can take the engineer beyond the limit set to his advance so long as he is confined to the construction of the present type of engine.

First, we must consider the question: _What is the problem, stated precisely and in its most general form, that engineers have been here attempting to solve?_

After stating the problem, we will examine the record with a view to determine what direction the path of improvement has taken hitherto, to learn what are the conditions of efficiency which should govern the construction of the modern steam-engine, and, so far as we may judge the future by the past, by inference, to ascertain what appears to be the proper course for the present and for the immediate future. Still further, we will inquire, what are the conditions, physical and intellectual, which best aid our progress in perfecting the steam-engine.

This most important problem may be stated in its most general, yet definite, form as follows:

_To construct a machine which shall, in the most perfect manner possible, convert the kinetic energy of heat into mechanical power, the heat being derived from the combustion of fuel, and steam being the receiver and the conveyer of that heat._

The problem, as we have already seen, embodies two distinct and equally important inquiries:

The first: What are the scientific principles involved in the problem as stated?

The second: How shall a machine be constructed that shall most efficiently embody, and accord with, not only those scientific principles, but also all of those principles of engineering practice that so vitally affect the economical value of every machine?

The one question is addressed to the man of science, the other to the engineer. They can be satisfactorily answered, even so far as our knowledge at present permits, after studying with care the scientific principles involved in the theory of the steam-engine under the best light that science can afford us, and by a careful study of the various steps of improvement that have taken place and of accompanying variations of structure, a.n.a.lyzing the effect of each change, and tracing the reasons for them.

The theory of the steam-engine is too important and too extensive a subject to be satisfactorily treated here in even the most concise possible manner. I can only attempt a plain statement of the course which seems to be pointed out by science as the proper one to pursue in the endeavor to increase the economical efficiency of steam-engines.

The teachings of science indicate that _success in economically deriving mechanical power from the energy of heat-motion will, in all cases, be the greater as we work between more widely separated limits of temperature, and as we more perfectly provide against losses by dissipation of heat in directions in which it is unavailable for the production of power_.

Scientific research, as we have seen, has proved that, in all known varieties of heat-engine, a large loss of effect is unavoidable from the fact that we cannot, in the ordinary steam-engine, reduce the lower limit of temperature, in working, below a point which is far above the absolute zero of temperature--far above that point at which bodies have no heat-motion. The point corresponding to the mean temperature of the surface of the earth is above the ordinary lower limit.

The higher the temperature of the steam when it enters the steam cylinder, and the lower that which it reaches before the exhaust occurs, the greater, science tells us, will be our success, provided we at the same time avoid waste of heat and power.

Now, looking back over the history of the steam-engine, we may briefly note the prominent improvements and the most striking changes of form, and may thus endeavor to obtain some idea of the general direction in which we are to look for further advance.

Beginning with the machine of Porta, at which point we may first take up an unbroken thread, it will be remembered that we there found a single vessel performing the functions of all the parts of a modern pumping-engine; it was, at once, boiler, steam-cylinder, and condenser, as well as both a lifting and a forcing pump.

The Marquis of Worcester divided the engine into two parts, using a separate boiler.

Savery duplicated that part of the engine of Worcester which performed the several parts of pump, steam-cylinder, and condenser, and added the use of water to effect rapid condensation, perfecting, so far as it was ever perfected, the steam-engine as a simple machine.