Specification of Arthur Woolf : steam and other boilers.

  • Woolf, Arthur.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Specification of Arthur Woolf : steam and other boilers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Woolfs Improved Apparatus for Converting Water, Qc. into Steam. diameter too great; and it must be remembered that the larger the diameter of any single tube of such a boiler, the stronger must it be made in proportion to enable it to bear the same expansive force as the smaller cylinders. It is not essential however to my Invention, that the tubes should be of different sizes; 5 but I prefer that the upper cylinders, especially the one which I call the main cylinder, should be larger than the lower ones, it being the reservoir, as it were, into which the lower ones send the steam to be thence conveyed away by the steam pipe or pipes. The following general direction may be given respecting the quantity of water to be kept in a boiler on my construction; it ought 10 always to fill, not only the lower tubes, but the main cylinder A and the cylinders C to about half their diameter, that is, as high as the fire is allowed to reach, and in no case ought it to be allowed to get so low as not to keep full the necks or branches which join the smaller cylinders marked with the letter a to the cylinders A or C, for the fire is only beneficially employed when 15 applied, through the medium of the interposed metal, to water to convert it into steam ; that is, the purpose of my boiler would in some measure be defeated if any of the parts of the tubes exposed to the direct action of the fire should present in their interior a surface of steam instead of water, to receive the transmitted heat, which must more or less be the case if the lower 2Q tubes, and even a part of the upper, be not kept filled with the liquid. Though I have only mentioned such arrangements of tubes as present them in an horizontal or in a vertical direction, yet they may be put in other positions, at the pleasure of the workman, without destroying the effect intended to be pro¬ duced, if the instructions I have given in this Specification be properly attended 25 to. As to the construction of the furnaces, though that must be obvious from the Drawings, it may not be improper here to remark, that they should always be so built as to give a long and waving course to the ffame and heated air or vapour, forcing them the more effectually to strike against the sides of the tubes which compose the boiler, and so to give out a large portion of their 30 heat before they reach the chimney ; unless this be attended to, there will be a much greater waste of fuel than necessary, and the heat communicated to the contents of the boiler will be less from a given quantity of fuel. My Inven¬ tion is not only applicable to all the uses to which the boilers in common use are generally applied, but to all of them, with much better effects than the 35 latter, and can besides be applied to purposes on which boilers constructed as they have hitherto been would be of little or no use. The working of all kinds of steam engines is one important application of my Invention; for the steam may be raised in a boiler constructed in the manner before described to such a temperature, and consequently to such an expansive force, as to work any engine,
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