Re: anyone built a porcupine boiler?
Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2013 7:43 pm
Yep! That's a basic porcupine boiler with lifu tubes inserted where possible to scavenge a little extra heat. Would probably work fine. But better yet would be to make the porcupine "quills" as Field tubes. Field tubes are described as: " ...the water tubes are single-ended. The tubes are closed at one end, and they contain a concentric inner tube. Flow is thus separated into the colder inner flow down the tube and the heated flow upwards through the outer sleeve. As Field tubes are thus dependent on thermo-syphon flow within the tube, they must thus always have some vertical height to encourage the flow."(quote from Wikipedia) This concept was used in the US Navy's Ward Boilers for steam launches in the 1880s to 1900s and more recently in nuclear reactor boilers.
Doing a simple google search I used "porcupine steam boilers", "lifu steam boilers", "Field tubes" and got COPIOUS amounts of info. Let your fingers do the walking for that sort of stuff, that's what the internet is about.
Doing a simple google search I used "porcupine steam boilers", "lifu steam boilers", "Field tubes" and got COPIOUS amounts of info. Let your fingers do the walking for that sort of stuff, that's what the internet is about.