Advanced steam technology
This type of boiler was continuously developed in the US, Britain and Germany throughout the 1930s and into the 1950s for use in cars, buses, trucks, railcars, shunting locomotives (US; switchers), a speedboat and, in 1933, a converted Travel Air 2000 biplane.
[2][3] In the UK, Sentinel Waggon Works developed a vertical water-tube boiler running at 275 psi (1.90 MPa) which was used in road vehicles, shunting locomotives and railcars.
Between 1925 and 1927 Anderson, and another Glasgow engineer John McCullum (some sources give McCallum), conducted experiments on a stationary steam plant with encouraging results.
A company, Steam Heat Conservation (SHC), was formed and a demonstration of Anderson's system was arranged at Surbiton Electricity Generating Station.
After an uphill trial from Eastleigh to Litchfield Summit, Holcroft is reported as saying: "In the ordinary way this would have created much noise and clouds of steam, but with the condensing set in action it was all absorbed with the ease with which snow would melt in a furnace!
The engine was as silent as an electric locomotive and the only faint noises were due to slight pounding of the rods and a small blow at a piston gland.
This had to be experienced to be believed; but for the regulator being wide open and the reverser well over, one would have imagined that the second engine (an LSWR T14 class that had been provided as a back-up) was propelling the first.
[8] The work of French mechanical engineer André Chapelon in applying scientific analysis and a strive for thermal efficiency was an early example of advanced steam technology.
The Sir Biscoe Tritton Lecture, given by Roger Waller, of the DLM company [12] to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in 2003[13] gives an idea of how problems in steam power are being addressed.
A parallel line of development was the return to steam power of the old Lake Geneva paddle steamer Montreux that had been refitted with a diesel-electric engine in the 1960s.
A power unit based on advanced steam technology burning fossil fuel will inevitably emit carbon dioxide, a long-lasting greenhouse gas.
This project mainly includes combined electrical generation and heating systems for private homes and small villages burning wood or bamboo chips.
[17] Until 2006 a German company called Enginion was actively developing a Steamcell, a micro CHP unit about the size of a PC tower for domestic use.
[18][19] Since 2012, a French company, EXOES, is selling to industrial firms a Rankine Cycle, patented, engine, which is designed to work with many fuels such as concentrated solar power, biomass, or fossil.
The Spilling company produces a variety of small fixed stationary plant adapted to biomass combustion or power derived from waste heat or pressure recovery.
Australian engineer Ted Pritchard's[26] main field of research from the late 1950s until the 1970s was the building of several efficient steam power units working on the uniflow system adapted to a small truck and two cars.
