How about adding some history of navel boiler explosions?

Have you considered nuclear steam power? Did the tech change much as did the fuel source?

Was there ever a landmounted version of the Pom Pom?

So (Merry Xmas) the IJN could/did use unrefined oil from the Dutch East Indies in their capitol ships w/out too much immediate damage.. BUT NOT on their DDs. n CLs etc? Was this because of the high sulfur content damaging the "sprayer/atomizers" or corrosive ash build up.. or both?? I'm assuming the larger ships had larger boilers with larger diameter spray nozzles etc so the corrosion issue was there; just acceptable due to desperation. Did that mean in turn that escorts couldn't emergency refuel from Capitol ships from that point forward as well? I understand the fuel itself was a "light" crude and as such was "usable" a Naval bunker oil.. Am I correct it was the high sulfur content, unlike "sweet" West Texas or Saudi oil that was the problem??

I saw some old USN training films about steam heated distillation of sea water for making fresh water and was wondering about the evolution of getting fresh water on ships. The one thing I noticed from the film was the use of heat exchange. It looks like the navy made sure that every temperature difference was used. The other thing was the constant addition of sea water to prevent the still from salting up and make the process continuous rather than a batch process. I would think modern ships would use reverse osmosis by now, but I am not a naval history expert, so it's just a guess.

The early 1200 psi plants killed a number of people before the Navy learned how to handle them. Twice the pressure and about 100 degrees higher temp than a 600 pound plant, if I remember rightly. BTW - we were told to use brooms to find leaks on a 600 pound plant too. Never had to, thankfully. We did have one odd occurrence that's worth remembering. The ship had just come out of the yards when I reported aboard, and there were the inevitable "yard issues" that always happen. One night I was on watch as assistant EOOW (Engineering Officer Of the Watch) with a grizzled old chief as the EOOW. The machinery space - combined engine room and boiler room, another of McNamara's cost saving measures :-( - was big, and noisy, and hot because we didn't have an air conditioned control room - the later ships in that class did, but we didn't. So, in the midst of all this cacaphony I heard - something. Couldn't put my finger on it, but it sounded kind of like a...hiss. I asked the EOOW, "Hey, do you hear that?" He listened and agreed - something was not as it should have been. Well, we moved around here and there trying to figure out where it was coming from and finally decided it was coming from under the lagging pad on a main steam line joint right above the EOOW's desk. So he had a couple of MM's get a ladder, get up there, *carefully* pull off the lagging pad, then run around the joint with a mirror-on-a-stick. Low and behold, steam clouded the mirror. Ooooh, sh*t. Someone with appropriate wrenches was sent up to tighten down the nearest nut-and-bolt, and....silence. Blessed silence. OK, lagging pad back on, back to work. A couple weeks later that chief (can't remember his name - 35 years, y'know?) stopped me in the passageway with "Hey, Mr. Jarvis - you remember that steam leak down in the main space?". I allowed as I remembered and he told me that when we got back to port and the plant was cold he had someone go up there and back that nut off - and discovered that the yard had short-bolted us. The bolts that secure main steam lines are supposed to be long enough to go all the way through the flanges on each pipe, and have to come out the far end of the nut by at least two full turns. The yardies had discovered that the bolts they had were a bit too short - so rather than getting bolts of the correct length they cut the end off another bolt and threaded it into the nut **backwards** so it looked like it stuck out far enough. If that nut had let go every man at the control panel could have died - all for the cost of a bolt. (OK, no doubt they were really *good* bolts :-). We then had to go over *every* joint in the plant to make sure they hadn't screwed us elsewhere too. Don't recall if there were additional issues, but it made an impression on me. Postscript: that yard was barred from further Navy contracting and went out of business, in part because of all the problems with our yard period.

You couldn't breathe that close to a main steam leak, I never heard of any man ever encountering one. My chief said the same thing tho.

@@asbestosfibers1325 Depends on the size of the leak. At those temperatures and pressures steam is a very hot and dry gas. By the time it's cooled enough to condense it will likely have dissipated to much to form visible steam. Sure, if it goes on long enough surfaces will start getting damp, but that doesn't tell you where your pinhole leak is.

Yeah, my dad was MPA on a Knox class Frigate. He told me the same thing. I was on a Spruance and two Burkes. 4 General Electric LM-2500 gas turbines are way better than steam.

How the hell do you even begin to fix a leak like that?

But, as of the day I write this, he has gotten to engines! Well, at least those up to 1950 or so.

@@TheRealColBosch yep! Loving this series too.

i’m happier for having read that. thank you for sharing

You've got that the wrong way round bud, British ships only dedicated one boiler to propulsion all the rest were for tea

@@themadhammer3305 Aye but that one boiler helped us create the worlds largest empire ruling over 1/4 of the world population

@@MasonMediaGroupWirral that is true, though the other boilers is why we wanted to create that empire in the first place

@@themadhammer3305 indeed aha, got to feed our tea addiction one way or another

@@MasonMediaGroupWirral would be an interesting alternate history to see what the world would have become if the British didn't have a crippling addiction to tea

Crew must have liked/respected the CO.

A variant, that I heard, was to take a 2x4 around, tracing the high pressure lines, where it broke, or broke your arm, you found the leak.

@@TheFilwud I would expect that in the confines of a naval boiler room, determining the source of a vapor cloud would be quite difficult. The cloud would likely become so large by the time it was noticed that its source would be indistinguishable from its surroundings.

@@TheFilwud I was relating what I was told some 44 years ago. I there is a leak it is usually a small hole, and the steam is coming out at high velocity. The "wind" blows the fog to the other side of the boiler room or engine room. truce on flame wars

triple point is just the pressure and temperature where the three normal phases meet. So on a phase diagram you see the area where gas, liquid and solid intersect. I'm not aware of any particular terminology for the boundary between superheated and saturated steam other than the two terms themselves.

British understatement. Geoff Who would note examples, but I suffer from disbelief.

Wit so dry I need to put on some moisturizer

@@8bitorgy Drach's sense of humor is somewhere between dessicated and anhydrous.

I, too, am much interested in the history of science and tecnology. When, in a historical setting, did things appear is revealing.

I also respond particularly badly to having holes poked in me by high velocity metal projectiles. It's up there with my least favourite activities

That how anthromorphism work.

Now that's all I can see 😂

Old ones looked like men.

Especially boilermakers!

😮

William Jeffery I’m still listening to this quote with Leonard Nimoy’s voice.

Then what about having a controlled smouldering simulacrum of a dying star used to sail steel ships against the wind and currents and launch furnace powered metal kites to attack enemy ships and armies hundreds of miles away... *laughs in nuclear fission boilers*

Managerial snobbery writ large...

“Yes, comrade! Make it nuclear!” ~Joseph Stalin

Bonaparte was never much of a naval expert

Hip hip horray

Hip Hip Hooray

Hip Hip! Hooray!

Hip Hip Hurrah

Hip hip! Huzzah!

I've got to tip my hat to you shipmate. I served in USS Nassau (LHA 4) as a 'topsider' in Operations. You guys did a job I couldn't.

@@robertf3479 Funny you should say that. I regarded flight deck operations as a more dangerous job. Then again, being on a warship is a bit dangerous no matter where you work. Cheers.

Reported onboard the USS Mauna Kea (AE-22) as a non-rate Fireman Recruit in October 89 and I was a BT for all of 2 or 3 weeks before they sent me messcranking. After my 90 days they sent me to the MM side of the plant, but did that mean I didn't have to participate in Firesides? Nope...

Long Beach, CGN-9. We ran on saturated steam. I mentioned that to the ME Dept Chair. UC Boulder in 1981, and he went ballistic. He served on the Bunker Hill in the Korean War. which of course ran off superheated steam. I tried to explain, but... he couldnt see the Navy being so stupid. Lol, I gave up explaining nukes.

@@sundiver137 I should explain, the flight deck IS probably the most dangerous area of the ship to be working on. You can easily get run over by tow tractors, get blown over the side by jet exhaust, sucked into jet engine intakes, accidentally walk into and get 'blenderized' by aircraft propellers, hit and killed by breaking arrester wires on carriers … the list is endless. By 'Topsider' in the Operations Department in the Nassau I worked in the ship's Intelligence division as LPO and watch supervisor. No danger at all in comparison to many of the engineers or flight deck guys. Earlier in USS Caron (DD 970), again in Operations but on a much smaller ship besides my Intel duties I also stood Bridge watches and at General Quarters I worked in Damage Control Central. My miscellaneous other jobs included line handling while at Sea and Anchor detail and during Underway Replenishment. Underway Replenishment was somewhat more dangerous because lines under strain between two ships steaming in very close formation can snap, possibly injuring or even killing linehandlers. This operation often takes place at night on open decks in 'less than ideal weather and sea conditions.' Men do get lost over the side at times and sometimes are never found. Many times I found myself up to my waist in sea water and fuel oil. To be honest … I had a ball at times. Would I do it again? Probably.

I think that was the reason - a steam locomotive had to regularly be maintained in a factory, simply because the vibrations really got to it. I'd presume your boiler didn't need those maintenance intervals (and would have been much harder to transport there...), which is why you treated the water. Did you also condense the steam to re-use it as feed water? How much is 170psi in "man-units"? Outside of turbines, I seem to remember until ~30bar, locomotive engines didn't have condensation equipment and were fed common filtrated water. Atmospheric pressure is 1bar, so 30 bar was 30x atmospheric pressure. How much is atmospheric pressure in psi?

@@enysuntra1347 15 psi is atmospheric. 30 bar is 450 psi.

@@enysuntra1347 Would have thought a steam engine would have a much kinder life in a factory than on a loco. On the rails, it is constantly starting and stopping, running at changing pressure, and under vibration from the movement of the loco. In a factory, it basically runs 24/7 at the same steady speed and only stops for maintenance. An engine in a factory generally has 3 uses - driving a compressor, driving an electric generator, or to provide rotary power to machinery, all of which are fairly steady uses with little change in output power needed, and no initial extreme full-on strain like proving the power to get a loco moving from stationary.

Yep at the pressure we ran if you were close it could kill you also. We didn't recover water as it ran machinery at was exhausted. At the class the drilled in to us for the lowest license how dangerous super heated steam was.

@@enysuntra1347 Atmospheric pressure (at sea level) is ~14.7 PSI, but a bar is actually a bit lower than that, at ~14.5 PSI. 170 PSI = 11.72 bar, and 30 bar = 435.11 PSI. (A bar is technically a metric unit, though not the "official" SI unit, which is pascals (Pa). The bar is defined as exactly 100,000 Pa, which is lower than atmospheric, which is 101,325 Pa.)

I was the Main Propulsion Assistant and then the Ass't Engineer on the NASSAU for three years.

Yes

Also, Hollywood movie makers.

"In Afghanistan, I killed 17 people" ... "But dad... I thought you were a mechanic" ... "I never said I was a good one"

Hat Man ...I sure will miss my friends!

Faulty boilers were Bomber Harris' prefered weapons of choise. It's confirmed guys.

Jimmy M I am also an MMN any advice for a new nuke?

@@joshuaholmes468 Are you an ELT or regular nuclear machinist mate? I was surface mm NEC 3386, so we called regular nuclear machinist mates (I think they were NEC 3385)- mechanical operators if I recall correctly. It's a little different for ELT since that's our primary watchstation, but we're still responsible for qualifying the other watchstations, which was the hardest part for me since you kind of want to use your down time to relax. Qualifying ELT was easy, and it's generally a pretty easy job. My experience may be a bit out of date since it's been 20 years since I was in, I was on the Enterprise which was decommissioned 7 years ago I believe. The Enterprise reactor/plant model is similar to that of conventional boiler ships that have 8 boilers, and the reactor size is similar to submarine S5W reactors, but a little bit bigger. I trained on S5W reactor in Charleston, SC Naval Weapons Station on the former Daniel Webster submarine. Our chemistry controls on the Enterprise are probably way different than the Nimitz or Ford class uses. We used hydrogen and ammonia for the primary side, and phosphates for the secondary side. No idea what Nimitz or Ford classes use. It's a pretty good program, definitely worth sticking with it. Though I admit what I do now is nothing like what I did in the Navy, but it still looks good having practical work experience with some skilled labor, something many college students can't say when they get out of college.

Jimmy M I am going regular MM sub volunteer a lot of that sounds similar to what I learned I am thinking about Putting in my 20

My brother is an ex EM/ Firemen that went to Idaho Falls for his nuke school,,, Spent whole time in the Navy on fast attack boats mostly out of Groton,,, I was lucky enough to get aboard twice and that was the older class fast attack,, I was impressed but only really got to see from midship forward, only FM were allowed back in the aft sections,, Guess they didn't want to take a chance of errating any civilians ,or maybe the security behind all of that reactor area,, It was the cold war and ever patrol was dangerous, My brother still sometimes eludes to stories if pressed that he will not speak about only to say , Yeah it was pretty crazy or intense and a half smile.

​@@joshuaholmes468 20 year sub EMNC here if you have any questions.

Wow, a piece from an explosion 10 miles away!!! That sure beats my story of seeing an oxygen bottle with 2000 psi fall off a rack, breaking the top valve off, taking off like a rocket, and being found 2 miles away after knocking a hole through the shop roof.

@@charlesmartin8454 was at work at Benders shipyard in Mobile Alabama when he a gas and oxygen bottle tied down in a pickup bed at the state docks while they brought the ship up river. Somehow valve came off and it sounded like bomb went off as it slammed into the truck bed and vented.

@@charlesmartin8454 Heh, there is an old video of a Russian truck full of gas cylinders having an accident. It caught fire, then the cylinders started blowing valves and flying around with cones of fire behind them.

just look up steam engine accidents. Back in the nineteen hundreds it happened all the time. Even happened in the 20th century. You get reports like 'the boiler took off like a rocket, hit the tracks at X distance and wielded itself to the tracks'. Yes, the accidents were THAT violent.

@@1Maklak I think I saw that clip on KZfaq. That was in Russia wasn't it? Traffic on both sides of a multi laned divided highway came to a halt to avoid all of the exploding and rocketing cylinders. It was amazing!!!!

Yes please!

Please do a video on turbines, thanks

@Kabuki Kitsune Your statement is true. The minimum injection temperature was 210 degree F. Even at 250 degree it took very powerful pumps to atomize the goo for the burners. An interesting tidbit: Bunker C is what is left over from distillation of the the more valuable lube oils, gasoline, diesel , kerosine, etc. As the refining industry became more efficient, the percentage of Bunker C by-product became smaller and hence more expensive. Only when the maintenance cost savings of a cleaner burning fuel began to equalize with burning cheap but nasty black oil did the Navy consider switching. I'm sure it was an unintended blessing to the black cats.

and this is why the larger modern ships went nuclear.

Richard W I thought gas or more specifically combined steam and gas en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_steam_and_gas COSAG was a method of providing a virtually instantaneous motive power. Being stuck in port awaiting the boilers heating up appearing a poor idea if a bucket of instant sunshine might be wending its way towards that port.

@Kabuki Kitsune "Bunker C Oil" comes from the residuum cut from a vacuum fractional tower and is basically roofing asphalt used to seal leaks on roofs and as a binder for making road asphalt. It is just the amount of other volatiles that is left to allow Bunker C to somewhat flow.. Someone found out that they could make more money by refining what was left that it became useful for making a very high grade Coke for steel making. Coke is a solid. What was left from the Coke making process could be used for making lubricants.

@@COIcultist That is correct, I went on a gas turbine course from Portsmouth RN Dockyard to General Electric in Birmingham (UK), back in 1963 when gas turbines were becoming the norm for just that purpose - fast get away from a standing start until the boilers were capable of powering the main steam turbines.

Drach is a master teller of accurate stories of history. No doubt of that. I've seen various KZfaq videos about the battle of Samar, and his is by far the best, and seems most accurate.

During Desert Storm we Med-Evac'd some Boiler Techs from a steam powered LPH that suffered a main steam line rupture. Most of them died either on the scene or, in one case after we got him into USS Nassau's sickbay (Level One Trauma Center as good as either of the Hospital ships.) Our doctors and surgeons were surprised this kid hung on as long as he did, parboiled as he was.

I rember a news article when in about 2005 in New York an 80year old steam pipe from a district heating plant did rupture. It blew a 6´deep hole in most of the street. I dont rememer if there were any casualties. Fun Fact the German Technischer Überwachungsverein (literaly techincal surveilance club more commonly referred to as TÜV ) which which atests vehicles road safty was founded in the wake of boiler explosions at the beginning of the 20th century. They still do that and a lot of stuff more.

Bro where do you live heated sidewalks sound dope

@joe jitsu You do realize the Democratic Party was split on the issue between Northern Dems and Southern Dems, right? That's how Lincoln got to be President. It was sectional, not party-driven. And the parties flipped in the 1960s. Stop with the obsolete view of Dems vs. GOPers, please. It is only used as a parrot argument these days.

@@jameson1239 Grand Rapids, Michigan. The steam is used by some of the buildings for HVAC, too.

609 psi

My ship, the USS Guam had two B & W boilers, superheated, 650 psi, one main engine 20,000 SHP

@@chaz000006 safety 1 was @ 44,5 bar and master safety @ 47 bar. Blowed in snfl 2002 in Lisbon at the same time as uss Samuel B Roberts was mooring longside Zerstörer Lutjens. SBR went to condition A. Due to the noise and a sailboat comming pretty close to us and them.

If you lost a finger, there was nothing to be done. The wound would be quarterized.

Humans are orks, didnt you know?

I mean at this point most warships carry a nuclear bomb to make them go so...

+@@alexsis1778+ Nuclear Power on ships that aren't submarines is incredibly rare.

@@cnlbenmc And nuclear powerplants are phisically incapable of initiating a positive feedback fission chainreaction.

+@@ineednochannelyoutube5384+ Well No freaking duh.

I know it took AGES until lubrication and leakage problems were solved so superheated steam could be used in locomotive engines; most boiler illustrations in the vid also had no superheater. Do you know when superheated steam was introduced into stationary and waterborne steam engines?

@@enysuntra1347 I don't know exactly, but superheaters were common on stationary and marine applications by the late 1800s.

How do you get a liquid to be compressible?

@@Fetguf IIRC they mostly all are, to a very very small extent. The example I saw on Wikipedia, for example, says that water is about 1.8% denser at a depth of 4km (roughly 400 bar) in the ocean.

Also when he said a smaller diameter pipe would heat up and become ductile/degrade faster than a larger diameter pipe. Setting aside factors like scale buildup leading to inefficient heat transfer, as long as there is an uninterrupted flow of water through the system, the heating of the carrier tube is inconsequential based on size. As long as there is a working fluid present to conduct the heat, the pipe walls should be in no danger of overheating no matter their size.

That uses a fission reaction to boil that water!

@@MaeLSTRoM1997 and possible floating nuclear bomb.

@@merafirewing6591 Nope, reactor grade uranium is generally incapable of a prompt critical reaction. Still potentially dangerous, but not a floating bomb.

@@merafirewing6591 Not even close.

It works for me.

Does the cat shuttle attach to the sleigh, or to Rudolph?

@@gerardmdelaney to the bridle

Don't think Rudolph would like that. Put a load on all the wrong places.

@@gerardmdelaney and think of the poor AB that had to crawl under all that.

@@AtomicBabel That's why the good Lord invented E-2s (NATO OR-2).

I was on the USS Hepburn (FF-1055) during her '85 WestPac cruise when she blew her 1,200 psi main supply line. Made a huge mess. Found out that 3 ships came out of rework with wrong grade metal for the main pressure pipes. Luckily the PO in charge at the time knew something bad was about to happen and had got everyone out the emergency trunk just as the line blew.

@@johnknapp952 Thank God for all the grizzled/profane CPO’s!

You snipes had a wicked tough, dirty and potentially dangerous job. Much respect from a topside twidget here. Interestingly, I think the U.S. Navy eliminated the BM rating.

Kevin Springer I had the “pleasure” of spending part of my 19th birthday inside the boiler of a DDG, scraping at the tubes with an angled piece of steel. They were kind enough to stick an elephant trunk air blower through the tiny hole behind me, since it was still pretty hot inside. The boiler techs were smart enough to put an ignorant skinny midshipman to good use! My full respect to anyone who had it as a full time job.

Bill Brockman I was 6’2” 160 lbs and the only one skinny enough to fit in the mud drum and steam drum. By the way I am now cloister phobic. Thanks BT1 Johnson.

@@Johnnycdrums BM (Boatswains Mate) is still a going thing, it was the BT (Boiler Technician) rating that was eliminated since very few active Navy warships today use oil fired steam plants, primarily LHD type I think. Not certain but I think a number of the USNS auxiliaries may still be steamers … everything else is gas turbine or diesel (auxiliaries I think.) The last LHD hull and the new America class LHAs are gas turbine powered.

@@robertf3479 ; got it.

Men used to sing, and it was glorious

As an engineer who also loves literature, I’m glad to know that I’m not the only hairy-knuckle dragging, supposed “Low brow” who does! 😉

@@drcovell I, sir, am an organic chemist. In my experience, the average scientist or engineer knows a damsite more about arts and literature than the average arts graduate does the reverse.

A Boilermaker.

I served aboard a Knox class frigate and by 1975 we had perfected the 1200 psi boiler. BTW the working pressure was 1,275 psi and I did observe a few minor super heated steam leaks and one major one.

What's the Gearing-class you served on Sir Engineer?

@@SukacitaYeremia The Gearing class destroyer was a further development of the earlier Sumner class, and entered service right at the end of WWII. My ship, the USS Hamner DD-718, entered service in late 1945 and actually has a very brief appearance in Drac's video on the class.

Oof

@Kabuki Kitsune The Alarm class was designed by Sir William White in 1889 as an enlarged version of his previous Sharpshooter class. They had a length overall of 242 ft (74 m),[1] a beam of 27 ft (8.2 m)[1] and a displacement of 810 tons.[1] They were engined with two sets of vertical triple-expansion steam engines, two locomotive-type boilers, and twin screws There are numerous examples of this.. where one or several ships in a class use locomotive boilers... Some are literally just a few locomotive boilers shoved in next to each other .... they proved heavy and even broke a ships back at one point.. with much loss of life

Almost all the paddle boats used on inland waterways in Australia like the Murray-Darling system and Gippsland Lakes used old railway locomotive boilers with fireboxes adapted to burn wood. The riverboats were all under 150 feet long, so railway boilers had sufficient capacity to power them.

The Bathurst class corvettes all used engines fabricated in railway workshops - because nothing else was available at the time

@Kabuki Kitsune The usage of locomotive boilers in ships predates turbines. Was locomotive type boilers used at all in turbine plants ?? A reciprocating type of engine is something else.

@Kabuki Kitsune Locomotive boilers are easier to build than water tube boilers so therefore cheaper at the expense of higher water consumption and slower response. The power levels at low pressure are comparable as this is just a question of tube surface area.

Ah, the blessings of the under-weight and slim! I remember very well that I was often the one "volunteered" for various tasks that required a man (our female soldiers would often suddenly disappear at such times) to correct some fault on top of an already precarious structure or to squeeze between two mostly-secured containers to find out why they were still moving. Luckily, neither limb, nor life was lost, though I learned some valuable lessons about the loyalty of my fellow soldiers...

What would you think of a factory which needed heat in certain locations, but only for precise times. To get it they ran a closed loop at 140C. Others used dry steam, some of which was used 'live'.

In the boiler room

*queen intensifies*

@Justice Boofer Da da da dada dada!

@@treyhelms5282 Isn't it 'Da da deda deda!".

@@Kevin_Kennelly I guess one can spell it out differently. Cheers.

Condensing "boilers" extract energy from the flue gas steam generated when the fuel is burnt. But they are not really boilers at all, because the water is never allowed to get hot enough. The economiser is a feed-water pre-heater sat after the super heater. Really big boilers might have an air pre-heater behind that.

My ship, the USS Guam had an economiser that meshed with the superheaters in the outer flue of the boilers. Before the economiser was a feed water heater that used water that was freshly condensed to heat the incoming water

Still manufactured by Greens Co in UK , Fitted my last one to a ship in Dubai 30 years ago.

And land based boilers too - a number of buildings have been demolished by boilers in their basements. Even a simple hot water service can demolish a house by penetrating three to four floors on the way out the roof.

Not exactly to your comment,but Mark Twains book,Life on the Mississippi covers some of the boats that burnt,including the death of his brother. Well worth reading. He left being a riverboat pilot because of the Civil War. And did not return till years later,but still a very good read.

paul manson . Thank you. I know why he used Mark Twain as a pen name but I’ve only read Huckleberry Finn, and that decades ago. I’ll take a look.

There were two primary reasons for frequent FT boiler failures, Poor Maintenance and Operating Errors. If care wasn't taken to descale boilers using river water, they would scale up and the tubes and or furnace would overheat and fail. Riveted joints in the shell would fail when either broken rivets or cracks between rivet holes were ignored. Operators would lose the water level due to outside distractions or more commonly intoxication. In some cases, catastrophic failures occurred when the Chief tied down the safety valves so they could beat their rival steamboat. Steamboat boiler explosions only declined after Jurisdictional Inspections and Operator Licensing were established.

Victor Mershon . Thank you. I remember reading about the racing but I hadn’t linked it to the boiler failures. I’ve always thought those sternwheelers were particularly wonderful boats and when I was little I made a kit of the Robert E Lee.

This is even funnier because the part of ship that goes underwater is often painted red.

I don’t get the joke. Can you explain?

@@jamesharding3459 In Warhammer 40000 universe some orks believe that anything painted red moves faster. And it usually does.

*WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!*

Евгений Левченко I don’t anything about 40K besides TTS videos, but now I get it. Funny.

,,,,,,,, muscoangelo ,, comment above 3 months ago,,, Thats engineering!

In the sixties I served in the engine room of an Essex class WWII carrier (CVS-20) with a 600lb plant. All manual controls and at 40 years old it purred like a kitten with little or no problems. (Hydraulic catapults). In Bremerton I was transferred to a 1200lb carrier (CVA63) where the boilers and engine were controlled in a room room in the machinery space. Every important control was remote and automatic (Hagan). The Catapults were steam operated. Nothing but trouble with that 7 year old system at 1200psi, 900F. We even had boilers fail in other machinery rooms by "blowing out tubes" which at the time was blamed on "poor maintenance" . We even kept a running record or which of the four machinery rooms failed and how often!. CVA63 went on to be the longest serving aircraft carrier in the fleet for many years before it was de-commissioned.

A leak in the condenser will present itself by: very hard to get a really low pressure at the hot water side slowly increasing salinity level in the feed water - not good.

@@admiral06472 How many boilers feeding the same steam feed pipe ?

@@admiral06472 Tube failure is almost always either solids (soot or minerals) on or in the tubes (which increases the tube surface temperature and reduces strength) or manufacturing faults (asymmetric tubes or bad tube crimps). Maintenance can only fix the first problem.

@@TheStefanskoglund1Two boilers per main engine: USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63), formerly CVA-63, is a supercarrier in the United States Navy. ... Propulsion: Westinghouse geared steam turbines, eight Foster Wheeler steam boilers, four shafts; 280,000 shp (210 MW). Speed: 33 knots (61 km/h; ... Decommissioned‎: ‎12 May 2009 Commissioned‎: ‎29 April 1961 Awarded‎: ‎1 October 1955 Status‎: ‎Stricken, to be disposed of

I would go further with that statement in fact to see what steam did first for a country then the world was/ is still one of the most transforming event ever,,, It completely transformed everything,, for the better or worst depending where you stand on the issues

Coal dust is also extremely dangerous.

@@kokofan50 Quite explosively so and absolutely deadly to humans over time. But it's the only way coal can compete with oil and natural gas. I worked in the power industry in my early 20s and coal plants are the absolute worst. Even burning high quality "clean coal" you still have to shut down once or twice a year to dig out the "klinkers". There's a lot of silica that comes with the coal, it melts down and accumulates at the bottom of the fire box and eventually needs to be removed. Usually manually and usually by some poor sap like me when I was 21 years old.

Did they not at one time use a slurry of pulverized coal in water, even though that ate heat, so that it could have controlled injection. It could be used in fuel oil, also.

@@its1110 I'd have to dig pretty deep but I don't think so. The latent heat of evaporation of water is huge and it wouldn't contribute any thermal energy. A slurry of pulverized coal mixed with oil on the other hand could work. I wonder if anyone's tried that. Sort of a "Flex Fuel" power plant. For me, coal is dead as a dodo, as far as fuel supplies go, but that presents an interesting engineering challenge.

@@kokofan50 breathing oil is pretty dangerous also.

Instructions unclear dick caught in oven door.

we used to use broom handles and wave them in front of us.

These stories amuse me. I worked at a 1200 PSI power plant and in my experience a steam leak was not hot as close a 12 inches, you could literally place a bare hand in front of a leak of 1200 PSI/ 1005 F degree steam and not get burnt A leak capable of cutting off legs would require such steam flow as to overdraw the boiler and the noise would be deafening You wouldn't need to look for it, it would announce itself I tried to "cut off a broom handle" by placing a wooden handle directly in front of a leak, all I succeeded in doing is making the handle wet and warm.

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