@kevincrosby1760

2 years ago

I worked with similar principles daily for years while in the Navy. The ship I was assigned to was steam turbine driven, with a nominal steam pressure of 600 PSI (41 BAR) with superheat. This means that we generated steam at 600 PSI, then ran the steam back through superheater tubes in the firebox to raise the temperature. As the pressure goes up, so does the boiling point. The temperature of steam at 1 BAR is 100 C. The temperature of steam at 600 PSI/41 BAR is about 487 F/ 253 C. After running it through the superheater, we had steam at a working pressure of 600 PSI (41 BAR) at about 850 F/454 C. The interesting thing about steam is that the phase change from water to steam or steam to water takes additional heat. Once you heat 1 pound of water to 100 C, it takes an ADDITIONAL 970 BTUs to change that pound of water to a pound of steam at 100 C. That gives you 970 BTU of energy to use for something. As the steam leaves the nozzles in the turbine and hits the blades it loses energy and cools. The purpose of the superheat is to give you that much additional work as the temperature falls...even after losing 190 C of heat to performing work, there was still that 970 BTU left to be extracted before it became water again. This is VERY simplified overview of a subject upon which entire books have been written. As far as the video goes, know how to find a steam leak that is at 600 PSI, 850 F, and invisible to the naked eye? In all seriousness, with an old-fashioned straw broom which you wave in front of you. When half the bristles disappear and the rest catch fire, you have found your steam leak. We made our steam on a bit larger scale. We were running 32,000 HP / 24,000 kw of geared propulsion turbines, with enough steam left over to supply 8 mW electrical of turbine generators plus steam-driven auxiliary equipment, hot water, space heating, and galley services.

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