Late Era Enclosed Steam Engines

[Richard Hed]

I have seen a few pockets of steam engine revival, such as a bottle engine powering a generator at someone's house, but not much more than that.
It boils down to efficiency, and even the best of steam engines do not have good efficiency.

The good part about steam engines is that you can burn pretty much anthing that burns in the boiler, including cow dung, straw, wood, coal, sunflower seed shells, and even things like corn (not recommending to waste food, but it does burn), etc.

The downside is building and maintaining a boiler.
Those things are a pain, and you basically need to be standing there to watch the water level at all times.

One engine that survived well into the 1950's was the Soule Speedy Twin, because it had so much torque, and could easily be reversed.
The Speedy Twin is a very powerful, and very compact engine, and can reverse using only two eccentrics and no links.
It took me a long time to figure out how a Speedy Twin is capable of reversing.
The Speedy Twin was used to power sawmill carriages, and the amount of money that a sawmill could make was directly tied to how many times the carriage could transit per hour.
Some operators tried electric motors on their carriage, but converted back to the Speedy Twin, since their mill output dropped when trying to use an electric motor.
And a sawmill generates a large amount of sawdust, which makes good fuel for boilers, and so free fuel.

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About efficiency,of course what you are saying is true, but also irrelevant. Irrelevant because the peeps who would use this have other costs that are unsustainable. For instnace, take a person on one of the islands from Vancouver to the Aleutians. (and there are quiter a few)., He has a small boat which uses some kind of liquid fuel, he may have to cross 1 to 10 miles of water to get supplies--flour, sugar, salt, squids, etc. including, of course, the liquid fuels.

Now say he has a HOnda generator that uses gasoline. First, the gasoline is expensive in these areas because of transportation costs for the distributors. Second, the very fact that he has to pay for gasoline for his own transportation, adds a GREAT deal of cost. Plus he may not have a job in which he gets a real return on a regular basis. So, compare that to having a steam power setup. Gets his fuel by selecting buffalo chips (or bear chips in this case), wood, grass, dried weeds, etc just for the harvesting effort. Now he probably will require a small amount of gasoline to run his chainsaw and boat motor, but unavoidable unless he has a rechargable electric chainsaw.

There are other benefits with a boiler system, heating the house/shop, cooking, and hot water. So a lot of the "inefficiencies" work out to be wholistically quite efficient. (Right now in the summer in the desert area of the Soviet, I have electric cooking indoors which means I have to COOL my house. How efficient is that?) When we speak of efficiencies, too often we overlook the "unseen, invisible" side effects, sort of like the corporations, citioes, and general public before the EPA act--dump sewage, industrial poisons, any type olf garbage in the lakes, streams and parks indiscriminately. These dumpers gained the benefit of cheaper products at the expense of the public being poisoned and the environment being destroyed. When examining these efficiencies, ALL the circumstances should be included .

 

[GreenTwin]

I read a story a few years ago about sugar mills in Indonesia, and how it had become more economical to convert from electrical back to boilers and steam engines.
I think they burned the leftover stalks in the boiler.
And so even though the steam engines were less efficient, overall cost of operation was less.

Our family lumber mill used sawdust created from sawing and planing wood to fire the boilers.
For about 50 years, the steam was used to run two steam engines, which powered the machinery, and also to operate the kilns, which dried the lumber.
The steam engines were replaced in the 1950's, but the boilers are still used to power the kilns.
The EPA forced a fly-ash removal system be added (after we sold the mill), and that cost the owner I think $1 M.

One person on ytube uses sunflower seed shells burned in a boiler to heat all the buildings on his farm, and he has an automated boiler/feed system. Works very well, and could be used to feed a steam engine.

Some cities burn garbage to power steam turbines, or to produce steam for heating.

If there is plenty of excess fuel that will be discarded anyway, then burning it is one way to power a steam engine.

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[Nerd1000]

About efficiency,of course what you are saying is true, but also irrelevant. Irrelevant because the peeps who would use this have other costs that are unsustainable. For instnace, take a person on one of the islands from Vancouver to the Aleutians. (and there are quiter a few)., He has a small boat which uses some kind of liquid fuel, he may have to cross 1 to 10 miles of water to get supplies--flour, sugar, salt, squids, etc. including, of course, the liquid fuels.

Now say he has a HOnda generator that uses gasoline. First, the gasoline is expensive in these areas because of transportation costs for the distributors. Second, the very fact that he has to pay for gasoline for his own transportation, adds a GREAT deal of cost. Plus he may not have a job in which he gets a real return on a regular basis. So, compare that to having a steam power setup. Gets his fuel by selecting buffalo chips (or bear chips in this case), wood, grass, dried weeds, etc just for the harvesting effort. Now he probably will require a small amount of gasoline to run his chainsaw and boat motor, but unavoidable unless he has a rechargable electric chainsaw.

There are other benefits with a boiler system, heating the house/shop, cooking, and hot water. So a lot of the "inefficiencies" work out to be wholistically quite efficient. (Right now in the summer in the desert area of the Soviet, I have electric cooking indoors which means I have to COOL my house. How efficient is that?) When we speak of efficiencies, too often we overlook the "unseen, invisible" side effects, sort of like the corporations, citioes, and general public before the EPA act--dump sewage, industrial poisons, any type olf garbage in the lakes, streams and parks indiscriminately. These dumpers gained the benefit of cheaper products at the expense of the public being poisoned and the environment being destroyed. When examining these efficiencies, ALL the circumstances should be included .

If you want to burn wood for power you can also use a wood gas generator and feed the resulting gas to a regular spark ignition engine. Not quite sure how the numbers work out on that vs a steam engine.

 

[GreenTwin]

If you want to burn wood for power you can also use a wood gas generator and feed the resulting gas to a regular spark ignition engine. Not quite sure how the numbers work out on that vs a steam engine.

I recall the large gas bags on top of busses, I think in England, during WWII, with the gas generator hung on the back bumper.
Very creative, and it appeared to work well.

And one person was burning bulk corn to heat his house.
Perhaps one could find some spoiled corn that would otherwise be discarded.
He said truckloads of corn are relatively cheap (this was a few years ago; nothing seems to be cheap these days).

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[GreenTwin]

Check out this taper turning mechanism.
Has anyone ever done something like this?
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[Richard Hed]

If you want to burn wood for power you can also use a wood gas generator and feed the resulting gas to a regular spark ignition engine. Not quite sure how the numbers work out on that vs a steam engine.

Yes that can be done. But in the case of steam, one needs to create a rocket type burner that cleanly burns all the hydrocarbons. It uses almost all the possible heat in the fuel and leaves little to no smoke. It's best to use it directly. Also, don't forget that these type systems are best where fuels are expensive or even impossible to get.

 

[Nerd1000]

On the topic of enclosed steam engines, if you have a single acting design is there any reason not to build it like a petrol engine but connect the crankcase to the condenser so any steam that slips past the rings gets sucked out?

I guess one would need an oil separator so oil mist from the crankcase doesn't contaminate the feed water. But classic double acting engines have it even worse, the steam oil inevitably goes to the condenser and has to be removed after the fact.

 

[GreenTwin]

Oil contamination can cause a boiler to foam, and Charles Porter mentions this in his book.
It can render a boiler useless.

I recall reading about the Mississippi naval boat boilers/condensers, but I forget exactly how they handled oil contamination.
I think they had a dump valve to occasionally clean out either the boiler, the condenser, or perhaps both.

I studied the side beam engine types, and associated boilers, but have forgotten some of the details.

The condenser is the item near the center of the engine with the stack-looking object on it.
It contains spray jets, that spray water up into the exhaust steam to condense it.

Here is a section of a side beam engine condenser.

 

[GreenTwin]

Apparently they sometimes used seawater in the old boilers.

 

[GreenTwin]

Jet condenser information.

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[GreenTwin]

Mentions grease filter.

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[Richard Hed]

I recall the large gas bags on top of busses, I think in England, during WWII, with the gas generator hung on the back bumper.
Very creative, and it appeared to work well.

And one person was burning bulk corn to heat his house.
Perhaps one could find some spoiled corn that would otherwise be discarded.
He said truckloads of corn are relatively cheap (this was a few years ago; nothing seems to be cheap these days).

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I never heard of these gas bags, other than politicians. Is it possible to put a gas bag on every politician? Hmmm. Anyway, would like to hear more about these gas bags on the buses.

 

[ShopShoe]

Trivia:

I don't know about the gas bags, but running gasoline engines on gaseus alternative fuels was necessary during the WW2 era and quite common. As an aside, Jacques Cousteau was inspired to design the regulator for the acqualung based on a regulator used for running vehicles:

https://www.cousteau.org/legacy/technology/aqua-lung/

Corn-fueled heaters are used (and sold) today, Just search for "Corn-Fueled Heater" Various crops also became sources for heat during the Great Depression when the market prices for grain dropped below the cost of buying other fuels.

--ShopShoe

 

[HMEL]

Trivia:

I don't know about the gas bags, but running gasoline engines on gaseus alternative fuels was necessary during the WW2 era and quite common. As an aside, Jacques Cousteau was inspired to design the regulator for the acqualung based on a regulator used for running vehicles:

https://www.cousteau.org/legacy/technology/aqua-lung/

Corn-fueled heaters are used (and sold) today, Just search for "Corn-Fueled Heater" Various crops also became sources for heat during the Great Depression when the market prices for grain dropped below the cost of buying other fuels.

--ShopShoe

As a side note if you were the one growing the corn you would shell it and burn the cobs. They were stored in a small shed appropriately named the cob shed. The old hand driven corn sheller tore the kernels of and spit the cob out of a chute on the bottom. Corn would usually go to the animals. The cobs burned very well. That is what my grandmother used in her old cook stove. Not a lot of wood on the great plains.

 

[GreenTwin]

Here is one link.
In this link, they used town gas.
I will look for photos of the gas generator hanging off the back of the bus.

https://www.vintag.es/2020/06/gas-bag-vehicles.html

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[GreenTwin]

Use caution if you decide to try and build one of these generators.
There are stories of these type devices exploding without warning.


https://wonderfulengineering.com/du...uel-these-cars-were-converted-to-run-on-wood/


http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/gascar/gascar.htm


https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/londons-ww2-experiment-with-coal-powered-buses-54446/

 

[WisJim]

I have a pamphlet from some US government agency about converting a Ford 9N type tractor to run on wood gas. I think it was originally World War 2 vintage. I also had a friend who stored methane that he made from manure, in large tire inner tubes.

 

[GreenTwin]

Cleaning up my hard drive.
Ran across a few more engines.
These are not my photos.

These engines were designed at the end of the steam era, and would be quite reliable I think due to the totally enclosed construction and extensive oiler system.
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