| Fire-tube Boiler |
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This type of boiler was used on virtually all Steam Locomotives in the horizontal "locomotive" form. It is also typical of early marine applications and small vessels, such the as small Riverboat used in the movie The African Queen . It also has extensive use in the stationary engineering field, typically for low pressure steam use such as heating a building. OPERATION In the locomotive type boiler, fuel is burnt in a Firebox to produce hot combustion gasses. The firebox is surrounded by a cooling jacket of water connected to the long, cylindrical boiler tube. The hot gasses are directed along a series of ''fire tubes'', or ''flues'', that penetrate the boiler and heat the water thereby generating saturated steam. The steam rises to the highest point of the boiler, the ''steam dome'', where it is collected. The dome is the site of the ''regulator'' that controls the exit of steam from the boiler. In the locomotive boiler, the saturated steam is nearly always passed into a '' Superheater '', back through the larger flues at the top of the boiler, to dry the steam and heat it to ''superheated steam''. The superheated steam is directed to the Cylinders or a Turbine to produce mechanical work. Exhaust gasses are fed out through a chimney, and may be used to pre-heat the feed water to increase the efficiency of the boiler. Draught for firetube boilers, particularly in marine applications, is usually provided by a tall smokestack. In all steam locomotives, since Stephenson's ''Rocket'' , additional draught was supplied by directing exhaust steam from the cylinders into the smokestack through a blastpipe, to provide a partical Vacuum . Modern industrial boilers use fans to provide forced draughting of the boiler. SAFETY CONSIDERATIONS Because the fire-tube boiler itself is the pressure vessel, it requires a number of safety features to prevent mechanical failure. Boiler explosion, which is a type of BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion), can be devastating.
The fire-tube type boiler that was used in the Stanley Steamer automobile had several hundred tubes which were weaker than the outer shell of the boiler, making an explosion virtually impossible as the tubes would fail and leak long before the boiler exploded. In nearly 100 years since the Stanleys were first produced, no Stanley boiler has ever exploded. TYPES OF FIRE-TUBE BOILER
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