anwi wrote:Weird Harold wrote:
Actually, there is textev that the Writ explicitly approves of pressure cookers, and that implies some knowledge of safety-valves and/or pressure regulation.
True, they have pressure cookers, but the valves in our pressure cookers are more pressure regulation than safety valves. The safety valve would have to be an additional valve at the cooker; haven't seen those, yet.
A highly rated steam engine would have to operate at significantly higher pressures than a pressure cooker. And if you're relying on your operational pressure control valves in these instances, you're courting disaster. (I didn't research it, but I'd assume that pressure cookers were built before all high-pressure vessels were required to be fitted with safety valves...)
That said, there's a good chance that CoGA engineers will come up with the concept of safety valves all by themselves - eventually.
Pressure cookers operate at relatively low pressures (1 bar / 15 psi) - a leak in a moderately high pressure steam system (over 40 bar / 600psi) will cut you in half (and then start to condense into a vapour cloud 10 metres away). Super critical steam systems (2100psi) raise this to an entirely new level. (You find leaks with a broom - when the broom gets cut, you have found the leak).
Boilers got relief valves when the pressure exceeded 50 psi (shortly after they went into ships) as the use of fuse-able plugs to dowse the fire box got too dangerous.
Adding interstage reheat can further complicate things if you want to.
As I have said before, if you want to mess with them, give then a working power plant made from chrome moly steel built right on the edge of safety and watch them try to duplicate it(or hastelloy and running on raw seawater). Each failure reduces the number of available competent engineers and craftsmen.
as an example a water pre-heater on the Great Eastern ruptured and killed the a third of the engine room crew - some lived for up to 2 days before drowning in their own secretions from scorched lungs - steam is just as nasty chlorine if you breath it in.