Steam Actuated Inlet Valves?

A special section just for steam engines and boilers, as without these you may as well fit a sail.
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fredrosse
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Re: Steam Actuated Inlet Valves?

Post by fredrosse » Thu Apr 12, 2018 12:48 am

Very important, let us remember that electricity is a basically evil, unknown, mysterious thing. The engineers that use it many ways still don't know what electricitu / magnetism is, they just use its interactive properties to do various things. Anyone who would consider electricity on a steamboat is dabbling with danger. Kerosine lamps work fine, and don't threaten your life like electricity can.
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Re: Steam Actuated Inlet Valves?

Post by Lionel Connell » Thu Apr 12, 2018 12:51 am

TriangleTom,



What are you going to do with the exhaust valve?

Lionel
Last edited by Lionel Connell on Thu Apr 12, 2018 2:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Steam Actuated Inlet Valves?

Post by TriangleTom » Thu Apr 12, 2018 2:30 am

Lionel Connell wrote:TriangleTom,

What are you going to do with the exhaust valve?

Lionel
Because timing isn't quite as important as the inlet valve, I figured either a uniflow design or cam driven poppet would be suitable.
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Re: Steam Actuated Inlet Valves?

Post by cyberbadger » Thu Apr 12, 2018 2:35 am

fredrosse wrote:Very important, let us remember that electricity is a basically evil, unknown, mysterious thing. The engineers that use it many ways still don't know what electricitu / magnetism is, they just use its interactive properties to do various things. Anyone who would consider electricity on a steamboat is dabbling with danger. Kerosine lamps work fine, and don't threaten your life like electricity can.
....

My youtube channel post from earlier this year...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34KOwxGalvk



:lol:

-CB

P.S. The Solenoid motor video is hilarious. Very well done rube goldberg. “Let us redefine progress to mean that just because we can do a thing, it does not necessarily mean we must do that thing.” -- Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
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Re: Steam Actuated Inlet Valves?

Post by Lopez Mike » Thu Apr 12, 2018 2:46 am

Fred,

I agree totally about letting electrons float about promiscuously all over the place. My antipathy to them is enhanced by the fact that, unlike stalwart and reliable sources of energy like wood, electricity normally gives no reliable sense of its activity by giving off any smoke.

Added to that is my observation, and those of countless observers, that when smoke is emitted from electrical devices, it portends evil. Clearly the primal and critical element of electricity is occult smoke as every time smoke appears it arrives simultaneously with the device becoming useless. And it smells bad at the same time. Any substance that is clearly only composed of foul smelling emissions is clearly up to no good and should be left ashore.

From microprocessors to battery jumper cables, nothing but the stench of the devil!
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
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Re: Steam Actuated Inlet Valves?

Post by Lionel Connell » Thu Apr 12, 2018 3:29 am

Because timing isn't quite as important as the inlet valve, I figured either a uniflow design or cam driven poppet would be suitable.
Something to keep in mind if your electronic inlet timing gets a bug in it. While you don't have to be concerned about valves hitting pistons as you do with an IC engine, there is another potential catastrophic even that you can have occur which doesn't exist in an IC engine. If your engine is running at speed and your inlet valve opens too soon you could end up with an extremely high pressure event in the cylinder as the piston tries to compress a lot more steam than was intended. A uniflow engine would normally compress the remainder of the exhaust steam in the cylinder to near the inlet steam pressure just before the inlet valve opens. If after the exhaust ports are closed the inlet valve then opens prematurely allowing a dose of high pressure steam into the cylinder at the start of the compression cycle you may find the cylinder cover going into orbit. The valve sketch that was posted earlier would enable some amount of the excess steam to be pushed back into the steam line but if the engine was running at speed there would be a pressure spike that could possibly exceed your design limits. It is worth giving consideration to ways of either ensuring that the steam cannot be let in early, or, have a blow off valve to limit maximum cylinder pressure.

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Re: Steam Actuated Inlet Valves?

Post by Lionel Connell » Thu Apr 12, 2018 3:39 am

From microprocessors to battery jumper cables, nothing but the stench of the devil!
Yes. my electronics engineers assure me that smoke is actually the secret ingredient inside ICs that makes them work. This is proven they say by the observation that if you let the smoke out of an IC it immediately stops working.

Lionel
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Re: Steam Actuated Inlet Valves?

Post by fredrosse » Thu Apr 12, 2018 12:16 pm

Yes, smoke leaking out of electrical devices is clearly to be avoided.

As to further evidence of the inherent evil of electricity, for those of us who were involved with British cars and motorcycles years ago. For many years most of British electrics in these machines were manufactured by the Lucas Electric Co.

And just about anyone who was around back then knew very well the established nickname for George Lucas, the founder of Lucas Electric. I will let our forum members reply with his nickname, as I am sure many here know it very well!
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Re: Steam Actuated Inlet Valves?

Post by fredrosse » Thu Apr 12, 2018 12:37 pm

From Lionel: "If your engine is running at speed and your inlet valve opens too soon you could end up with an extremely high pressure event in the cylinder as the piston tries to compress a lot more steam than was intended."

Back in the 1970s the US DOE financed GM, Lear Industries, plus a few others to build a modern, low emissions steam car. Single seated poppet valves for admission and exhaust were generally used, the exhaust valves usually used what looks like an ordinary IC engine exhaust valve configuration.

The admission valves were also poppet valves, but reversed such that main steam pressure seated the valves, and thus if there was too much compression the admission poppet valve would just relieve compression back into the steam chest. This worked fine, and GM stated that this did not hurt engine efficiency.

So on that knowledge, probably this relief feature would be easily incorporated into any new steam engine design. The poppet admission valve on my uniflow domestic heat-power module steam engine had this feature, along with sharp cutoff that is usually difficult to achieve with a simple poppet valve.
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Re: Steam Actuated Inlet Valves?

Post by DetroiTug » Thu Apr 12, 2018 2:59 pm

Quote: "the established nickname for George Lucas, the founder of Lucas Electric."

The Prince of darkness? I remember the old Triumph's and BSA's electrical systems. With those huge air cooled Zener diodes :) replaced by modern $2 Bridge Rectifiers.

To be fair though, most vehicle electrical systems back then were not so great and much of that was caused by people customizing motorcycles and half-azzing the wiring.

Lucas was the successor of Powell & Hanmer of Birmingham England, they made the Kerosene and carbide lamps that are on my Locomobile, over a hundred years old still working...
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