The Steamboating Forum

Hello everyone I'm Steven, I've been using the steamboating forum from time to time to learn more about steamboats and steam engines in general and I figured that I should make an account. I have a very keen interest in anything steam powered. And I hope to one day build my own steamer and be able to work on steam engines as a profession I'm only 18 at the moment so hopefully time will tell.

Good to have you join here, with much practical knowledge about small reciprocating steam plants. Did you know that steam power production is presently the largest source of power generation in the world? Steam engines, in the form of steam turbines, generate about 70% of all the electricity in the USA, as well as the world. This is far more power than all the ships on the oceans, trucks and cars in all countries, all the hydroelectric power stations in the world, and all other engine powered equipment, combined. Steam-on.

Yes I did, steam power has been my passion ever since I was young enough to understand what it was. Although I do wish we'd see steam (especially reciprocating steam) in other applications that isn't in a power plant. As of late I've been doing some research on semi uniflow steam engines and have been envisioning a quadruple expansion semi uniflow engine arranged in a v4 configuration and placed beneath a Brotan watertube locomotive style boiler with a water jacketed firebox in a similar arrangement that has been used on Steam Yacht Gondola. I plan to put the engine in a small 18ft boat that I'm also working on. Although I still have much to do in terms of design and I still have some things to decide on, like wether I'd like it to be a displacement, semi displacement, or even a hydrofoil. I intend to use it as a testbed of sorts in terms of getting the maximum thermal efficiency out of different boilers with the first test boiler being the previously mentioned Brotan watertube. I'd also like to experiment with mechanical vapor recompression something I'm very much keen on, different types of fuels coal slurry, regular old coal, and various liquid fuels, and some other things I find interesting.

Welcome to the forum Steve. It sounds like you have a lot of exciting ideas to sus out!

Steve:
Interesting ideas, and I hope we see you make some of them.
Thoughts on a quad-expansion V4 engine. In a small boat you would end up with an engine of small volume and large cooling surface area. Not conducive to multi-expansion, or even double expansion.

My steeple-compound engine in my 17' boat only solves some of that issue due to the combined vertical cylinders with its better volume-to-surface ratio than a for-aft configuration provides. Operating at around 100 psi still makes a pretty wet system, until a temperature equilibrium is reached, after at least 5 minutes of steady operation.
See additional information in the reference below.

All considerations.
RussN

viewtopic.php?t=2211&hilit=Cluaran&start=60

Many thanks for the reply and my apologies for my rather late response. I have been questioning wether a quad-expansion v4 engine is the way to go, as balancing such an engine could proof challenging I've also recently read that with a high enough superheat temp many of the associated advantages associated with compounding prove less so. Perhaps I'm being a little too ambitious for my first project so scaling down many of these quite novel ideas is the way to go, having something that works on your first try keeps you interested, although I'm still adamant about building some non conventional power-plants incorporating many of those aforementioned ideas. Your Cluaran is a beautiful vessel with an interesting power plant that steeple compound of yours is wonderful.

Hi Steve,

the BROTAN design is very interesting and fascinating, but somewhat challenging to build. I built one for a 5" (1:11) steam locomotive. The steam production is excellent, but the operation is rather demanding.

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Dietrich

Thanks for posting the photos Dietrich. That is a beautiful piece of work. I admire your ability to silver solder so neatly - I need some lessons on that skill. The design is not one I have ever seen before. Did it get used in 'full sized' locomotives or other applications?

Seasonal Greetings from Cymru to all you steam enthusiasts. No 'traditional' snow on the west coast here but a beautiful sunny day. No combustion of any sort here apart from some chipolatas that I managed to leave in the oven with the turkey for too long.

Regards

Pete

Hi Pete,

the BROTAN-Boiler was designed for locomotives by the austrian engineer Johann Brotan in 1902 (BROTAN-Boiler - some more information).

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Dietrich