The Pioneer Vertical Water-Tube Boiler of the World (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 Excerpt: ...surfaces. Barium chloride acts similarly, producing barium sulphate and calcium chloride. All the alkalies are used at times to reduce incrustations of calcium sulphate, as are pure crude petroleum, the tannate of soda, and other chemicals. The effect of incrustation, and of deposits of various kinds, is to enormously reduce the conducting power of heating surfaces; so much so, that the power as well as the economic efficiency of a boiler may become very greatly reduced below that for which it is rated, and the supply of steam furnished by it may become wholly inadequate to the requirements of the case. It is estimated that a sixteenth of an inch thickness of hard "scale" on the heating surface of a boiler will cause a loss of nearly one-eighth its efficiency, and the loss increases as the square of its thickness. The boilers of steam vessels are peculiarly liable to injury from this cause where using salt water, and the introduction of the surface-condenser has been thus brought about as a remedy. Land boilers are subject to incrustation by the carbonate and other salts of lime, and by the deposit of sand or mud mechanically suspended in the feed water. It has been estimated that the annual cost of operation of locomotives in limestone districts is increased $750 by deposits of scale. The following paragraphs are taken from a report of Messrs. Hunt & Clapp to the A. S. M. E.: By far the most common commercial analysis of water is made to determine its fitness for making steam. Water containing more than five parts per hundred thousand of free sulphuric or nitric acid is liable to cause serious corrosion, not only of the metal of the boiler itself, but of the pipes, cylinders, pistons and valves with which the steam comes in contact. Sulphuric...