Chapter 990 Novice Steam Engine
?The promise of just 1,050 men was enough to send Marvin over the moon, as he profusely thanked Alexander for his generosity.
"Thank you, my lord. We will not fail you!"
And with that said, the main 'workshop' portion of the tour had come to an end.
But that did not mean Alexander was done.
No, for there was one last thing that he had yet to see.
And that could even be said to be the main attraction to the place.
"Marvin! Has that machine I wanted been constructed? I want to see the improvements."
After having his lunch there, which consisted of some bread and cheese with wine, the lord then asked this of the blacksmith.
"Ahhh.. of course, of course. It's all the way to the back, my lord."
Marvin was quick to comply with Alexander's desire and brought the visiting delegation to the very rear of the huge workshop, at a small clearing cordoned off by wooden palisades and guarded by soldiers.
The entire thing screamed- 'Stay out!'.
Although perhaps there was little need for such heightened security as Alexander could already see what was in there, a significant part of the 'artifact' standing tall and proud past all the obstacles, as a metallic *Twang- Twang* sound rang from out of it.
The moving sight of which made Alexander very eager to see the results.
"Please, my lord," With Marvin opening the gate, Alexander quickly stepped inside the small area and found that the pictures he had sent to Marvin six months ago had worked, letting the diagram come to life.
For there stood a Newcomen's atmospheric engine!
This precursor to the steam engine consisted of a stove like furnace constructed of brick and mortar, and was being constantly fed coal by two slaves equipped with a large shovel.
Right on top of the stove sat a dome shaped water reservoir made of the same material, which was filled with water and currently boiling and bubbling.
This boiler was connected by a metal chute to an iron cylinder atop it, inside which resided a steel piston, covered with high quality processed leather in order to make it smugly fit inside the chamber and not let any steam escape.
A circular metal piece was placed into the metal chute, working as a valve to keep the steam from meeting the piston unless allowed to.
Attached to the piston cylinder was another metal pipe, this one shaped like a V, with the mouth of the V leading to a tank of cool water held at a much higher height than the cylinder, about 10 meters from the ground.
This pipe pipe too had a valve attached to it, operated by a second worker.
And lastly, attached to the steel piston at the top of the boiler via steel chains was a rocking beam, with the fulcrum- i.e.- the midpoint set on a perched wall that was on level with the condenser tank.
One end of the beam was attached to the piston, and the other to a flywheel in a setup very reminiscent of oil rigs.
Only this time, it worked in reverse, with the chain portion being powered, driving the wheel that was attached by gear to a moveable hammer.
The way the entire thing worked was at first the steam valve was manually opened by an operator, letting the pressurized steam burst out of the valve like an enraged beast and hit the heavy iron rod with force thus driving it up.
Almost simultaneously, the second valve, which held the cold water back was let open and then instantly shut by the second worker, thus letting a jet of water into the piston chamber, at once cooling the place and creating a partial vacuum under the piston.
This pressure differential between the atmosphere above the piston and the partial vacuum below then drove the piston down making the power stroke,
Steam was then quickly readmitted to the cylinder, destroying the vacuum and driving the piston up again, while the injected cold water seeped out of a third pipe controlled by another valve.
This cycle of upward and downward motion continued perpetually, causing the attached beam to mimic its movement, thus driving the flywheel and moving the hammer connected to it.
Which was being ultimately used to hammer heated iron ingots into metal sheets, to be used for making weapons and armor.
That was the origin of the 'twank twank' sound.
Looking at the mammoth machine 'lumber' its way to usefulness, Alexander first and foremost gave a light smile and nodded towards Marvin, "Hmmm… good, I'm relieved that it works now! This is much better than the last one. You did a great job improving it! "
"No, no, my lord! All the credit goes to you. That jet of cold water was a stroke of genius we would have never been able to figure out in a thousand years!" Marvin chose to be humble and flattering.
The context of the matter was that Alexander had at first designed this mechanical engine with just the boiler and piston in mind.
His thinking had been something along the lines of this-
Heat the water into steam.
The steam would hit the piston causing it to move up.
The steam would lose all its energy and escape through a valve, kind of like in a pressure cooker.
Without the force to keep it up, gravity would then take over, causing the great weight of the piston to come crashing down.
The process would then repeat itself, driving a flywheel.
But the efficiency of that designed system was so abysmal that the thing could barely do anything useful.
The steam would give an anemic push to the piston and then bugger off, taking all of Alexander's hard work and money with it.
And there were lots of reasons for its abysmal performance.
For once, the pressure of the steam was nowhere near what Alexander would have liked.
The boiler could not be heated quickly enough by the primitive heating mechanism to develop those high pressures quickly enough, as the chamber kept losing pressure constantly due to the regular opening of the valve.
Plus the metal pipe and cylinder were not nearly airtight enough, and thus steam leaked through many of the cracks all the while.
Secondly, an enormous amount of the steam's power was wasted hitting and heating all the useless walls.
Thirdly, the reliance of gravity on the power stroke (downward stroke) was too inefficient, as the 'free force' sure took its sweet time.
It was nowhere fast enough.
The abysmal speed made Alexander realize that no matter how much he wanted to make the piston move faster, and no matter how much steam and energy he injected into it to do so, due to the constant nature of gravity, the downward stroke would always be the same.
This was clearly not acceptable.
And lastly, that first engine tended to get more and more sluggish as time went on.
This was due to a build up of condensation from previous strokes, as not all water vapor would escape, which would then also absorb some of the newly admitted steam's heat, depriving the piston of its power.
And worst of all, this particular phenomenon would become so bad after a few hours that the entire thing would become water clogged and stop moving altogether.
Alexander addressed some of these problems in this new and improved version.
For the first problem of steam leakage, Alexander tried to use rubber putty to seal the cracks and leaks in the pipes and cylinder to the best of his ability.
The efficacy of this act was mixed as the heat and vapor tended to react with the rubber and make it lose its elastic property.
So one needed to reapply this 'coating' regularly.
Moving on to the second one, Alexander had no real solution for this one as enormous loss of heat in such a setup was inevitable.
In fact, it could be said that the way he had decided to solve the third problem- trying to obtain a much more powerful descending stroke, had actually exacerbated the problem.
Because now, after the jet of water cooled the water vapor enough to create the vacuum, the cylinder walls would become cool, and then become heated once again the next batch of steam was added.
Meaning that a considerable amount of fuel would be used to just heat the cylinder and then cool it, only for it to be heated again.
But Alexander still chose this method because that was the best he got.
Not being a mechanical engineer, he had no real concept of how a real James Watt steam engine worked, except for the fact that water was boiled into steam and it somehow forced the pistons to move.
Thus, his idea of trying to solve the third problem by sprinkling water at high pressure to create a partial vacuum and thus pulling the piston could be said to be a masterstroke of genius, as Alexander had figured that part out on his own.
He took the inspiration from watching one of his teachers use this concept to demonstrate what was 'partial pressure' during a thermodynamics class and thought that it would be applicable here too.
Fortunately, it was!
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