IMPROVEMENTS IN PUMPS AND CONDENSERS FOR MOTIVE POWER ENGINES AND OTHER PURPOSES
Year: 1876

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Robert Mudge Marchant at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents on the 26th May 1870.
I, ROBERT MUDGE MARCHANT, of Kirby Street, Hatton Garden, in the County
of Middlesex, Civil Engineer. "IMPROVEMENTS IN PUMPS AND CONDENSERS FOR
MOTIVE POWER ENGINES AND OTHER PURPOSES."
My Invention consists in an improved method of applying that expression of
heat which is due to the compression of steam or other vapor or gas to the manu-
facture of further steam, vapor, or gas from the saturating water or liquid supplied
to such steam, vapor, or gas when under compression.
Such improved method of application is based on my discovery of the law that
any vapor or gas can be compressed without any thermometrical expression of the
increased temperature due to its compression, if during such compression it be so
saturated with a liquid that all the heat evolved by its compression shall be taken
up by the liquid and expressed in vapor out of such saturating liquid. And that
such process can be effected without destroying the clasticity of the steam or vapor.
According to my method of effecting such result the whole operation is confined
within pumps which are constructed for the purpose and which compress steam (or
other vapor or gas) under water or liquid saturation, and supply, for example, the
boiler of an engine with saturated steam.
I construct the pump or the first pump of any series of pumps of such capacity
of pumping power as shall deliver the proportion of the exhaust steam which is to
be compressed as steam with every revolution of the engine, and I make the pump
rod or rods of this pump of tubes working through glands in the ordinary manner.
I slot these tubes in such manner as to connect them with thin copper or other
compartments which are perforated or bored to receive the pipes, and in such
nauner as to put the interior of the compartment in communication with the
interior of the tube. I then thread these compartments on the tubes, making the
joints between them and at the ends by means of rubber washers which close up
the slot to the tube, where it is not in connection with the compartment. When
all the compartments are threaded on with alternate washers, the whole is screwed
up tight by means of a back nut or other suitable contrivance at each end for the
purpose. I keep the ends of the tubes forming the pump rods open to the atmo-
sphere, and by means of these tubes I convey into the copper compartments external
air saturated in its passage by water from the open end of one of these tubes. By
such means I can regulate the condensation by giving a greater or less supply of
Price 2d 1

page_text: water to the air, so as to make it either a good or inferior condensing medium, and
I obtain an enormous condensing surface in a small space. I then deliver the
steain charge for compression on the top of the water in the pumps, and the steam
that I require to be condensed into water (for the purpose of saturating such steam
charge when under compression) below the top of the water in the pump, and in
this water the copper compartments full of saturated air, and open by means of the
tubes to the external atmosphere, are given a corresponding motion with the stroke
of the pump, and the water for saturation is manufactured of the required propor-
tion of the exhaust steam in the pump itself, and without necessity for any external
condenser or other pumping arrangements. By such arrangement therefore the
whole of the exhaust steain is delivered into the pump, the proportion to be com-
pressed as steam is delivered forwards with the stroke of the pump, and the
proportion that has to be condensed for the purpose of saturating the former charge
is condensed in the pump itself, and the law herein-before named, by which such
process is effected, is applied in a complete and economical manner.
Although I have described my pumps and condensers as applied to steam or
motive power engines, they are applicable to other purposes where it is required
to compress and condense steam or other vapor or gas in ether or other gas
machines used in the manufacture of ice for example.