IMPROVEMENTS IN OBTAINING MOTIVE POWER BY THE COMBUSTION OF FUEL
Year: 1864

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Matthew Piers Watt Boulton at
the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
3rd May 1864.
I, MATTHEW PIERS WATT BOULTON, of Tew Park, Oxfordshire, do hereby
declare the nature of the Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN OBTAINING MOTIVE
POWER BY THE COMBUSTION OF FUEL," to be as follows:-
In the furnace or fire-box of an ordinary steam engine the air which enters
the fire-box for the purpose of combustion, and the gases which may be
generated from the fuel are intensely heated, and thereby greatly expanded in
volume. In undergoing this expansion they generate a large amount of
power, of which in the ordinary steam engine no use is made. The object of
the method now described is to utilise this source of power. For this purpose
the air and gases which pass through the chamber in which combustion takes
place, are made first to perform work in moving an engine, after which they
issue into a flue and communicate heat to water in the boiler of a steam
engine. Such heat as may escape through the sides of the combustion
chamber, or of the engine and the adjoining passages, may also be used to
impart heat to the boiler and the water contained in it. Thus all the power
derived from the engine set in motion by the heated gases is gained entirely
in addition to the power of the steam engine whose boiler is heated by them.
The heated gases may be employed to work a caloric engine by giving motion
to a piston in a cylinder. But as there is much difficulty in working a piston
in a cylinder by intensely heated gases, they may be employed to work a

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turbine or similar piece of mechanism, in working which by highly heated
gases no similar difficulty exists. For effecting the purpose in question, air
may be forced into a chamber where coal, coke, wood, or similar substances
are burnt, or aeriform matters in inflammable proportions may be forced into
a chamber and there ignited; such, for instance, as a mixture of air or of
oxygen with hydrogen, with carburetted hydrogen, with carbonic oxide, with
vapor of petroleum, with vapour of naphtha, with vapor of oils. Such a
mixture may be generated in various ways, as by heat, by electricity, by
chemical action. Its constituents may be forced into the chamber mecha-
nically, or by the pressure developed in the chamber in which they are
generated. Again, inflammable gas or vapour may be employed to work any
of the engines, which have been contrived for the purpose of being worked
by the explosion of gas mixed with atmospheric air; the heated products
after issuing from such engine being employed to impart heat to water in the
boiler of a steam engine. The inflammable aeriform mixture may be intro-
duced into a chamber just as it is into the cylinder of an engine worked by
the explosion of gas, and issuing thence in its ignited and heated state may
work a turbine or similar piece of mechanism, and it may be introduced into
two or more such chambers successively.
By any of the above methods the power afforded by the expansion of
volume which the air and gases undergo in the fire-box or combustion
chamber may be utilised previous to employing them to impart heat to the
water contained in the boiler of a steam engine: