Turbine engines

PeterZ wrote:I thought Howsmyn used steam turbines for his industrial air compressors?

He does.

saber964 wrote:

PeterZ wrote:I thought Howsmyn used steam turbines for his industrial air compressors?

He does.

I thought those were water powered using gravity potential energy.

PeterZ wrote:I thought Howsmyn used steam turbines for his industrial air compressors?

saber964 wrote:
He does.

Silverwall wrote:I thought those were water powered using gravity potential energy.

Nope, those are the Accumulators from the stage 1 or stage 2 water powered works. The Accumulators were direct power transfers via shafts, gears, belts, etc.

In HFQ, Paityr wondered to Howsmyn if pneumatic power could be used for machine tools in a further step towards making a proper assembly line process. Howsmyn seized the thought and ran with it - which is where steam-powered turbine compressors are being operated.
I believe Howsmyn is also employing steam engines to drive air into the furnaces for the forges and metalworking as well.

Kytheros wrote:

PeterZ wrote:I thought Howsmyn used steam turbines for his industrial air compressors?

saber964 wrote:
He does.

Silverwall wrote:I thought those were water powered using gravity potential energy.

Nope, those are the Accumulators from the stage 1 or stage 2 water powered works. The Accumulators were direct power transfers via shafts, gears, belts, etc.

In HFQ, Paityr wondered to Howsmyn if pneumatic power could be used for machine tools in a further step towards making a proper assembly line process. Howsmyn seized the thought and ran with it - which is where steam-powered turbine compressors are being operated.
I believe Howsmyn is also employing steam engines to drive air into the furnaces for the forges and metalworking as well.

I understood that the steam was running a standard piston system that drove the compressor which was set up in a turbine configuration. This is very different from using the turbine as the primary source of power.

As I recall Howsmyn discussed their desire to use turbines in the ICN ships but lamented the need to use gears to reduce the turbine's optimal RPM to a propeller's most efficient RPM. Howsmyn reflected that air compressors would benefit from the turbines higher RPM.

PeterZ wrote:As I recall Howsmyn discussed their desire to use turbines in the ICN ships but lamented the need to use gears to reduce the turbine's optimal RPM to a propeller's most efficient RPM. Howsmyn reflected that air compressors would benefit from the turbines higher RPM.

To add to this, the issue with the ships was that propellers don't work efficiently at high rpm, whereas high rpm is fine for generating air pressure.

Don

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PeterZ wrote:As I recall Howsmyn discussed their desire to use turbines in the ICN ships but lamented the need to use gears to reduce the turbine's optimal RPM to a propeller's most efficient RPM. Howsmyn reflected that air compressors would benefit from the turbines higher RPM.

Howy in MTAT:

"You can’t run a turbine efficiently at low RPMs, and you can’t run a propeller efficiently at high RPMs. That’s why Domynyk and I went for reciprocating engines. They run a lot more efficiently at those lower RPMs, and trying to cut the reduction gears we’d need to make turbines work for the Navy would’ve put an impossible bottleneck into the process. Either that or we’d have to run them at such poor levels of efficiency fuel consumption would skyrocket. We’d be lucky to get half as many miles out of a ton of coal. But for a central compressor to power a manufactory full of air-powered machine tools, the higher the RPMs the better! I wasn’t worried about that when we were talking about powering the blast furnaces or pumping water out of the mines. I was too busy thinking about the need to get the Navy’s engines up and running, so of course we concentrated on reciprocating machinery first! After all, turbines were mostly the way to power those electrical generating stations we can’t build anyway—it never occurred to me to use them to power compressors! That’s brilliant!"

At this time they used a steam-driven triple engine for hard blowing an blast furnace, not a turbine. Pretty much early 20th century industry standard except a triple is overkill (never used in OTL steel industry). I checked LAMA and HFQ but found not textev.

Captain Igloo wrote:

PeterZ wrote:As I recall Howsmyn discussed their desire to use turbines in the ICN ships but lamented the need to use gears to reduce the turbine's optimal RPM to a propeller's most efficient RPM. Howsmyn reflected that air compressors would benefit from the turbines higher RPM.

Howy in MTAT:

"You can’t run a turbine efficiently at low RPMs, and you can’t run a propeller efficiently at high RPMs. That’s why Domynyk and I went for reciprocating engines. They run a lot more efficiently at those lower RPMs, and trying to cut the reduction gears we’d need to make turbines work for the Navy would’ve put an impossible bottleneck into the process. Either that or we’d have to run them at such poor levels of efficiency fuel consumption would skyrocket. We’d be lucky to get half as many miles out of a ton of coal. But for a central compressor to power a manufactory full of air-powered machine tools, the higher the RPMs the better! I wasn’t worried about that when we were talking about powering the blast furnaces or pumping water out of the mines. I was too busy thinking about the need to get the Navy’s engines up and running, so of course we concentrated on reciprocating machinery first! After all, turbines were mostly the way to power those electrical generating stations we can’t build anyway—it never occurred to me to use them to power compressors! That’s brilliant!"

At this time they used a steam-driven triple engine for hard blowing an blast furnace, not a turbine. Pretty much early 20th century industry standard except a triple is overkill (never used in OTL steel industry). I checked LAMA and HFQ but found not textev.

I thought that the triples were used for the Haarahlds, not the blast furnaces... Am I wrong about that?

Don

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The tripples were used in both the blast furnaces and KH VIIs.

PeterZ wrote:The tripples were used in both the blast furnaces and KH VIIs.

Textev, sil vous plait