Ernest didn’t go to work today due to the turnover of the estate. He considered this his day off and even though he had thought of his assistants in the plant not capable of running the place, well, it’s just for a day.
For now, the sun was setting down, casting its orange glow across the estate while warm rays stread through the large windows.
Ernest was in the master bedroom, which was where he would sleep from this day onward.
A large four-poster bed occupied the center of the room.
Actually, calling it a bed almost felt wrong.
It looked more like sothing belonging to a duke.
Heavy carved wood.
Thick blankets.
Soft pillows.
A mattress large enough to fit three people comfortably.
Beside it stood matching wardrobes, bookshelves, and a polished writing desk positioned near the window overlooking the estate grounds.
The entire room alone was bigger than the house he grew up in.
That thought still felt ridiculous.
But now, there is this thought that lingered in his mind. Industrialization.
He went over to a table and pulled a chair and sat on it. He grabbed a notebook resting on the table and flipped the cover open.
He flipped through several pages until he reached the page where there was a drawing of a steam engine.
When one hears of industrialization, they associate it with the invention of the steam engine. Specifically, the Newcon Atmospheric Steam Engine. It was a machine invented by Thomas Newcon in the early eighteenth century.
Actually, Ernest found the story behind its invention fascinating.
Most people assud inventors created machines because they wanted to change the world.
That was rarely the case.
Usually, they were trying to solve a problem.
And the problem Newcon faced was water.
Not drinking water.
Mine water.
Back in England, coal mines and tal mines were becoming deeper every year.
The deeper miners dug, the more groundwater flooded the tunnels.
Workers spent enormous amounts of ti pumping water out manually.
Buckets.
Hand pumps.
Horse-driven pumps.
Entire teams of laborers worked just to keep mines from flooding.
And even then, many mines beca unusable because water accumulated faster than workers could remove it.
Coal remained trapped underground.
Iron remained trapped underground.
Profit remained trapped underground.
People needed a better solution.
And that was where Newcon ca in.
Ernest leaned back slightly as he rembered how the machine worked.
Actually, the design itself was surprisingly simple.
At least compared to modern engines.
The machine consisted of several major components.
A boiler.
A cylinder.
A piston.
A large beam.
And a pump.
The boiler produced steam.
That steam entered a cylinder and pushed out the air inside.
Then cold water was sprayed directly into the cylinder.
This part was the clever trick.
The cold water instantly condensed the steam.
Steam occupied a large volu.
Water occupied a much smaller volu.
When the steam suddenly beca water, a vacuum ford inside the cylinder.
Nature hated vacuums.
Atmospheric pressure outside imdiately pushed the piston downward into the low-pressure cylinder.
That movent pulled one side of the giant beam downward.
The opposite side lifted.
And that lifting motion operated a pump deep underground.
Then the process repeated.
Again.
And again.
And again.
It was revolutionary! Because for the first ti, a machine could continuously pump water from mines without requiring dozens of workers or teams of horses.
However, as impressive as it sounds, it was not enough to kick off an industrial revolution. Why? Well for starters, the thermal and work efficiency was abysmal, and so does its fuel consumption. The cylinder constantly heated and cooled every cycle instead of having a separate condenser.
But how specifically?
Assu one cylinder.
Diater:
1 ter.
Stroke length:
2 ters.
First, he calculated the piston area.
Area equals pi tis diater squared divided by four.
A = 3.1416 × 1² / 4
A = 0.785 square ters.
Atmospheric pressure was about 101,000 pascals.
If the cylinder ford a strong vacuum, atmospheric pressure would push the piston downward with force.
Force = Pressure × Area.
F = 101,000 × 0.785
F = 79,285 newtons.
Roughly eighty thousand newtons.
That was equivalent to the weight of about eight thousand kilograms pressing down.
Eight tons.
Ernest smiled slightly.
"Not bad."
Then ca work per stroke.
Work = Force × Distance.
W = 79,285 × 2
W = 158,570 joules.
Around 159 kilojoules per stroke.
If the engine made twelve strokes per minute:
159 kJ × 12
= 1,908 kJ per minute.
Convert to power.
1,908 kJ/min ÷ 60
= 31.8 kW.
Around forty-two horsepower.
Actually, that was impressive for a primitive machine.
One machine could replace many workers or horses.
But then ca the ugly part.
Fuel.
The problem was not that the engine produced no power.
It produced useful power.
The problem was how much heat it wasted.
Every cycle, steam entered the cylinder.
The cylinder had to stay hot so steam would not condense too early.
But then cold water sprayed inside the sa cylinder.
That cooled the tal walls.
Then the next batch of steam entered.
Before the steam could do anything useful, part of its heat reheated the cylinder again.
Cycle after cycle.
Heat.
Cool.
Heat.
Cool.
It was terrible from an efficiency standpoint.
Ernest wrote another estimate.
If coal provided about 24 gajoules per kilogram.
And the engine consud, say, 20 kilograms of coal per hour.
Heat input:
20 × 24 MJ
= 480 MJ per hour.
Convert to kilowatts.
480 MJ/hour ÷ 3.6
= 133 kW heat input.
Useful output:
31.8 kW.
Ideal simple efficiency:
31.8 ÷ 133
= 0.239.
23.9 percent.
But that was too generous.
Far too generous.
Real Newcon-style engines perford far worse because of heat losses, leakage, poor boilers, friction, and inefficient pumps.
Actual efficiency might be closer to one percent.
Maybe two percent if built well.
That ant most of the coal burned produced nothing but wasted heat. It was not until decades later that the design was improved.
And the man responsible for that improvent was Jas Watt.
Actually, Watt did not invent the steam engine.
That was one of the biggest misconceptions in history.
The steam engine already existed.
What Watt did was make it practical.
Ernest turned the page and began sketching another diagram beside the Newcon engine.
The problem remained simple.
The cylinder was constantly heating and cooling.
Every ti cold water entered the cylinder, enormous amounts of energy were wasted.
Watt looked at the problem and asked a simple question.
Why cool the cylinder at all?
Why not cool the steam sowhere else?
And that question led to the separate condenser.
Instead of spraying cold water directly into the cylinder, the steam would travel into a second chamber.
A condenser.
The condenser remained permanently cold.
The cylinder remained permanently hot.
The steam condensed inside the condenser.
The vacuum still ford.
The piston still moved.
But now the cylinder no longer needed reheating every cycle.
Fuel consumption imdiately dropped.
Dramatically.
In so cases, by more than half.
So historical records suggested Watt’s engines consud around seventy-five percent less coal than comparable Newcon engines.
Seventy-five percent.
That was an absurd improvent.
Imagine two mine owners.
Both pumping the sa amount of water.
One burns one hundred tons of coal.
The other burns twenty-five.
Who makes more money?
The answer was obvious.
Now, why is he thinking about it? Well, there will be a ti where the waterwheel reaches its limit. The waterwheel that is powering up the Helmarte Soap Works has a work of about 6 horsepower, and that’s the ideal. And it depends on the motion of the water. If that river flooded or if the waterwheel breaks, the factory operations would be halted.
Good thing he has photographic mory that allows him to recall details down to its smallest part of a machine.
And also, as he had thought earlier, he is going to run an experint, well not only steam engines should be introduced, but electric power as well. He imagined this estate to be the first electrified estate in the whole world.
How is that going to be possible? There’s a nearby stream near Beryl District.
"Okay, ti to draw!"
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