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56-762: The Baillie-Grohman Canal was suggested by the unusual geographic setting of the sources of the Columbia and the Kootenay Rivers. The Columbia River begins at Columbia Lake , flows north in the Rocky Mountain Trench through the Columbia Valley to Windermere Lake to Golden, BC . The Kootenay River flows south from the Rocky Mountains, then west into the Rocky Mountain Trench, coming within just over

112-448: A steam locomotive . This is because unavoidable temperature and/or pressure loss that occurs as steam travels from the boiler to the machinery will cause some condensation, resulting in liquid water being carried into the machinery. The water entrained in the steam may damage turbine blades or in the case of a reciprocating steam engine , may cause serious mechanical damage due to hydrostatic lock . Superheated steam boilers evaporate

168-433: A coke battery can be burned to heat a boiler; biofuels such as bagasse , where economically available, can also be used. In a nuclear power plant, boilers called steam generators are heated by the heat produced by nuclear fission. Where a large volume of hot gas is available from some process, a heat recovery steam generator or recovery boiler can use the heat to produce steam, with little or no extra fuel consumed; such

224-427: A configuration is common in a combined cycle power plant where a gas turbine and a steam boiler are used. In all cases the combustion product waste gases are separate from the working fluid of the steam cycle, making these systems examples of external combustion engines . The pressure vessel of a boiler is usually made of steel (or alloy steel ), or historically of wrought iron . Stainless steel , especially of

280-605: A mile from Columbia Lake, at a point called Canal Flats , where a shipping canal was built in 1889. The Kootenay then flows south down the Rocky Mountain Trench, crosses the international border and then turns north back into Canada and into Kootenay Lake near the town of Creston, BC . Rail construction in Canada and the United States made steam navigation possible in the Rocky Mountain Trench. There were two important railheads , Golden, BC and Jennings, Montana, near Libby. At Golden,

336-514: A much smaller volume of boat traffic than its northern neighbour, Windermere Lake . The Kootenay River , a major tributary of the Columbia, passes within a few thousand feet of the south end of the lake. In freshets the Kootenay, here already a large stream, sometimes overflows into Columbia Lake, and historically the Baillie-Grohman Canal connected the two bodies of water to facilitate

392-531: A vertical boiler from a Manitoba steam plow , and machinery salvaged from an old tugboat . Hayes however lacked the skill to assemble these components into a steamboat. Baillie-Grohman's only option was to task his millwright to help Jack Hayes complete the Clive . Clive was much too heavy for the shallows of the Columbia River, which were often choked with snags, that is, dead trees which had become lodged in

448-751: A violent eruption of the pressurized steam. When water is converted to steam it expands to over 1,000 times its original volume and travels down steam pipes at over 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph). Because of this, steam is an efficient method of moving energy and heat around a site from a central boiler house to where it is needed, but without the right boiler feedwater treatment, a steam-raising plant will suffer from scale formation and corrosion. At best, this increases energy costs and can lead to poor quality steam, reduced efficiency, shorter plant life and unreliable operation. At worst, it can lead to catastrophic failure and loss of life. Collapsed or dislodged boiler tubes can also spray scalding-hot steam and smoke out of

504-413: Is a standard providing a wide range of rules and directives to ensure compliance of the boilers and other pressure vessels with safety, security and design standards. Historically, boilers were a source of many serious injuries and property destruction due to poorly understood engineering principles. Thin and brittle metal shells can rupture, while poorly welded or riveted seams could open up, leading to

560-546: Is also used as a heat source for generating steam , either directly (BWR) or, in most cases, in specialised heat exchangers called "steam generators" (PWR). Heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs) use the heat rejected from other processes such as gas turbine . There are two methods to measure the boiler efficiency in the ASME performance test code (PTC) for boilers ASME PTC 4 and for HRSG ASME PTC 4.4 and EN 12952-15 for water tube boilers: Direct method of boiler efficiency test

616-414: Is boiled the result is saturated steam , also referred to as "wet steam." Saturated steam, while mostly consisting of water vapor, carries some unevaporated water in the form of droplets. Saturated steam is useful for many purposes, such as cooking , heating and sanitation , but is not desirable when steam is expected to convey energy to machinery, such as a ship's propulsion system or the "motion" of

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672-408: Is by simply using an induced draught fan (ID fan) which removes flue gases from the furnace and forces the exhaust gas up the stack. Almost all induced draught furnaces operate with a slightly negative pressure. Mechanical forced draught is provided by means of a fan forcing air into the combustion chamber. Air is often passed through an air heater; which, as the name suggests, heats the air going into

728-574: Is located at the south end of the lake. Columbia Lake is a fresh water lake located along Highway 93 and 95, between the centres of Canal Flats and Fairmont Hot Springs in British Columbia , Canada . Its average July temperature of 18 °C makes it the largest warm water lake in the East Kootenay. It has a mean depth of only 2.9 metres (9 ft 6 in), to a maximum of 5.2 metres (17 ft), with excellent water clarity as it enjoys

784-542: Is more usable or more common. where To measure the boiler efficiency in indirect method, parameter like these are needed: Boilers can be classified into the following configurations: To define and secure boilers safely, some professional specialized organizations such as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) develop standards and regulation codes. For instance, the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code

840-401: Is often used because it is more easily fabricated in smaller size boilers. Historically, copper was often used for fireboxes (particularly for steam locomotives ), because of its better formability and higher thermal conductivity; however, in more recent times, the high price of copper often makes this an uneconomic choice and cheaper substitutes (such as steel) are used instead. For much of

896-504: The austenitic types, is not used in wetted parts of boilers due to corrosion and stress corrosion cracking . However, ferritic stainless steel is often used in superheater sections that will not be exposed to boiling water , and electrically-heated stainless steel shell boilers are allowed under the European "Pressure Equipment Directive" for production of steam for sterilizers and disinfectors. In live steam models , copper or brass

952-416: The condenser . This results in slightly less fuel use and therefore less greenhouse gas production. The term "boiler" should not be used for a supercritical pressure steam generator, as no "boiling" occurs in this device. A fuel -heated boiler must provide air to oxidize its fuel. Early boilers provided this stream of air, or draught , through the natural action of convection in a chimney connected to

1008-457: The 'good cheer' demanded by such an occasion", Sandiland was ordered by the foreman to break out the false dam which had been keeping the Kootenay River from flooding the works. With the aid of another worker he did so, and thus became, as he later realized, the man who made the entire Selkirk and Purcell mountain range into an island. With the canal in place, this entire huge alpine region

1064-595: The East Kootenay region, had been away steamboating on the Stikine River as part of the Klondike Gold Rush . With no work for North Star on the upper Kootenay when he returned, Armstrong decided in 1902 to bring the vessel through the Baillie-Grohman canal to be worked on the Columbia river side of the trench. It took a month to move North Star through the sloughed-in canal. Among other problems, North Star

1120-599: The Kootenay River near the southern end of Kootenay Lake called Kootenay Flats. The problem for Baillie-Grohman was that the Kootenay River kept flooding Kootenay Flats. Baillie-Grohman thought the downstream flooding could be lessened by diverting the upstream portion of the Kootenay River into the Columbia River through the Canal Flats. This would have increased the water flow through the Columbia River, particularly near Golden and Donald, where Baillie-Grohman's proposal, if it had been implemented, would have threatened to flood

1176-460: The Rocky Mountain Trench ran for 300 miles, almost all of which was potentially accessible to steam navigation. Canal Flats was close to the midpoint, being just south of Columbia Lake, 124 miles upstream from Golden. In the early 1880s a wealthy European adventurer, William Adolf Baillie-Grohman (1851–1921), travelled to the Kootenay Region and became obsessed with developing an area far down

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1232-551: The Victorian "age of steam", the only material used for boilermaking was the highest grade of wrought iron , with assembly by riveting . This iron was often obtained from specialist ironworks , such as those in the Cleator Moor (UK) area, noted for the high quality of their rolled plate , which was especially suitable for use in critical applications such as high-pressure boilers. In the 20th century , design practice moved towards

1288-432: The air intake and firing chute, injuring the firemen who load the coal into the fire chamber. Extremely large boilers providing hundreds of horsepower to operate factories can potentially demolish entire buildings. A boiler that has a loss of feed water and is permitted to boil dry can be extremely dangerous. If feed water is then sent into the empty boiler, the small cascade of incoming water instantly boils on contact with

1344-437: The bed of the river. Snags could block navigation or sink a vessel that might strike them. Under these conditions, it took Clive 23 days to cover the 100 miles from Golden to the point upriver where the sawmill could be unloaded. As was common for construction projects in western North America at that time, the hard labor of building the canal was done by Chinese immigrant laborers. According to E.M. Sandilands, who worked on

1400-441: The boat where at least some of the transit of Gwendoline had to be accomplished by pulling the vessel out of the water, partially dismantling the boat, and pulling her along on rollers. Over the winter, Armstrong, it is reported, was able to prevail on the provincial government to expend funds to repair the canal. In late May 1894 Armstrong returned the completed Gwendoline back to the Kootenay River, this time transiting normally

1456-405: The boiler for use in various processes or heating applications, including water heating , central heating , boiler-based power generation , cooking , and sanitation . In a fossil fuel power plant using a steam cycle for power generation, the primary heat source will be combustion of coal , oil , or natural gas . In some cases byproduct fuel such as the carbon monoxide rich offgasses of

1512-490: The canal by the summer of 1889, then two years in the future. If he did not finish the canal on time, he would not receive the land far downstream. With Duchess under water and no other transport in sight, the clock was running on Baillie-Grohman's dream. There was at this time in Golden a man named Jack Hayes who had collected the pieces of a potential steamboat. These included an unpowered heavy-duty railroad construction barge,

1568-562: The canal on time, or at least could claim he had done so, his plan for acquiring ownership of the Creston area failed when the provincial government was found to have exceeded its authority when it entered into the bargain with Baillie-Grohman. Columbia Lake Columbia Lake is the primary lake at the headwaters of the Columbia River , in British Columbia , Canada . It is fed by several small tributaries. The village of Canal Flats

1624-472: The canal, the project was fatally defective from the start, because nothing in the stipulations between Baillie-Grohman and the provincial government required Baillie-Grohman to dredge or prepare the approaches to the canal. All Baillie-Grohman had to do was to build the canal and locks . However, without proper approaches, it would be near-to-useless. When these were completed, and after a ceremony enhanced by what Sandiland described as "a canoe well laden with

1680-413: The canal. But when the time came to transport the supplies and the people by water to Canal Flats, Duchess , then the only steamer available, was then sunk in the deepest part of the river up to her smokestack. River transport was the only way Baillie-Grohman could move the heavy sawmill and construction equipment the 124 miles to Canal Flats. The provincial government required Baillie-Grohman to complete

1736-476: The corresponding feedwater pressure must be even higher, demanding a more robust pump design. Another consideration is safety. High pressure, superheated steam can be extremely dangerous if it unintentionally escapes. To give the reader some perspective, the steam plants used in many U.S. Navy destroyers built during World War II operated at 600  psi (4,100  kPa ; 41  bar ) pressure and 850 degrees Fahrenheit (454 degrees Celsius) superheat. In

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1792-422: The event of a major rupture of the system, an ever-present hazard in a warship during combat , the enormous energy release of escaping superheated steam, expanding to more than 1600 times its confined volume, would be equivalent to a cataclysmic explosion, whose effects would be exacerbated by the steam release occurring in a confined space, such as a ship's engine room . Also, small leaks that are not visible at

1848-401: The exhaust of the combustion chamber. Since the heated flue gas is less dense than the ambient air surrounding the boiler, the flue gas rises in the chimney, pulling denser, fresh air into the combustion chamber. Most modern boilers depend on mechanical draught rather than natural draught. This is because natural draught is subject to outside air conditions and temperature of flue gases leaving

1904-450: The furnace in order to increase the overall efficiency of the boiler. Dampers are used to control the quantity of air admitted to the furnace. Forced draught furnaces usually have a positive pressure. Balanced draught is obtained through use of both induced and forced draught. This is more common with larger boilers where the flue gases have to travel a long distance through many boiler passes. The induced draught fan works in conjunction with

1960-435: The furnace, as well as the chimney height. All these factors make proper draught hard to attain and therefore make mechanical draught equipment much more reliable and economical. Types of draught can also be divided into induced draught , where exhaust gases are pulled out of the boiler; forced draught , where fresh air is pushed into the boiler; and balanced draught , where both effects are employed. Natural draught through

2016-538: The heating vessel of domestic water heaters. Although such heaters are usually termed "boilers" in some countries, their purpose is usually to produce hot water, not steam, and so they run at low pressure and try to avoid boiling. The brittleness of cast iron makes it impractical for high-pressure steam boilers. The source of heat for a boiler is combustion of any of several fuels , such as wood , coal , oil , or natural gas . Electric steam boilers use resistance- or immersion-type heating elements. Nuclear fission

2072-417: The journalist-adventurer Lewis R. Freeman visited Canal Flats, he could see traces of the canal running in from Columbia Lake which came to a sharp stop at a collapsing wall of rotting logs, which Freeman believed must have been the remnants of one of the lock gates. M.J. Lorraine, a retired civil engineer, found, photographed and diagrammed a similar situation in 1922. Although Baillie-Grohman had completed

2128-467: The navigation of steamboats (although only three trips were ever made through it). This article about a location in the Regional District of East Kootenay , Canada is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Boiler A boiler is a closed vessel in which fluid (generally water ) is heated . The fluid does not necessarily boil . The heated or vaporized fluid exits

2184-473: The newly built transcontinental railroad and other areas of the Columbia Valley. The provincial government refused to allow the diversion. However, Baillie-Grohman was able to obtain ownership of large areas of land in the Kootenay region, provided he engaged in certain forms of economic development, including construction of a shipping canal and a lock . The lock was necessary because the Kootenay River

2240-415: The overall energy efficiency of the steam plant (the combination of boiler, superheater, piping and machinery) generally will be improved enough to more than offset the increased fuel consumption. Superheater operation is similar to that of the coils on an air conditioning unit, although for a different purpose. The steam piping is directed through the flue gas path in the boiler furnace, an area in which

2296-491: The point of leakage could be lethal if an individual were to step into the escaping steam's path. Hence designers endeavor to give the steam-handling components of the system as much strength as possible to maintain integrity. Special methods of coupling steam pipes together are used to prevent leaks, with very high pressure systems employing welded joints to avoided leakage problems with threaded or gasketed connections. Supercritical steam generators are frequently used for

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2352-402: The production of electric power . They operate at supercritical pressure. In contrast to a "subcritical boiler", a supercritical steam generator operates at such a high pressure (over 3,200 psi or 22 MPa) that the physical turbulence that characterizes boiling ceases to occur; the fluid is neither liquid nor gas but a super-critical fluid. There is no generation of steam bubbles within

2408-415: The rehabilitated canal. From 1892 to 1898, steamboats transported ore from the mines in the southern part of the Rocky Mountain Trench down the Kootenay River to Jennings Montana. In the fall of 1898, railroads were completed in this area which put the three surviving steamboats out of business, and for the most part they were little used after that. Armstrong, the dominant personality in river transport in

2464-429: The size of the 1897 upper Kootenay sternwheeler J.D. Farrell . Despite its cost, the Baillie-Grohman canal was only transited three times by steam-powered vessels. In 1893, Armstrong built Gwendoline at Hansen's Landing on the Kootenay River, and took the vessel through the canal north to the shipyard at Golden to complete her fitting out. By this time it appears that the canal had been damaged or deteriorated to

2520-413: The steam to carry more energy. Although superheating adds more energy to the steam in the form of heat there is no effect on pressure, which is determined by the rate at which steam is drawn from the boiler and the pressure settings of the safety valves . The fuel consumption required to generate superheated steam is greater than that required to generate an equivalent volume of saturated steam. However,

2576-407: The steam within. The design of any superheated steam plant presents several engineering challenges due to the high working temperatures and pressures. One consideration is the introduction of feedwater to the boiler. The pump used to charge the boiler must be able to overcome the boiler's operating pressure, else water will not flow. As a superheated boiler is usually operated at high pressure,

2632-553: The superheated metal shell and leads to a violent explosion that cannot be controlled even by safety steam valves. Draining of the boiler can also happen if a leak occurs in the steam supply lines that is larger than the make-up water supply could replace. The Hartford Loop was invented in 1919 by the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company as a method to help prevent this condition from occurring, and thereby reduce their insurance claims. When water

2688-409: The temperature is typically between 1,300 and 1,600 degrees Celsius (2,372 and 2,912 degrees Fahrenheit). Some superheaters are radiant type, which as the name suggests, they absorb heat by radiation. Others are convection type, absorbing heat from a fluid. Some are a combination of the two types. Through either method, the extreme heat in the flue gas path will also heat the superheater steam piping and

2744-795: The transcontinental line of the Canadian Pacific Railway ("CPR"), which parallels the Columbia south from the bridge at Donald , turns east to follow the Kicking Horse River , surmounting the Continental Divide at Kicking Horse Pass , then running past the resort at Banff then east to Calgary . Jennings was reached by the Great Northern Railway , built across the Northern United States from Minnesota to Washington by James J. Hill . Between these railheads

2800-485: The use of a chimney is a type of induced draught; mechanical draught can be induced, forced or balanced. There are two types of mechanical induced draught. The first is through use of a steam jet. The steam jet oriented in the direction of flue gas flow induces flue gases into the stack and allows for a greater flue gas velocity increasing the overall draught in the furnace. This method was common on steam driven locomotives which could not have tall chimneys. The second method

2856-420: The use of steel, with welded construction, which is stronger and cheaper, and can be fabricated more quickly and with less labour. Wrought iron boilers corrode far more slowly than their modern-day steel counterparts, and are less susceptible to localized pitting and stress-corrosion. That makes the longevity of older wrought-iron boilers far superior to that of welded steel boilers. Cast iron may be used for

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2912-414: The water and then further heat the steam in a superheater , causing the discharged steam temperature to be substantially above the boiling temperature at the boiler's operating pressure. As the resulting " dry steam " is much hotter than needed to stay in the vaporous state it will not contain any significant unevaporated water. Also, higher steam pressure will be possible than with saturated steam, enabling

2968-406: The water, because the pressure is above the critical pressure point at which steam bubbles can form. As the fluid expands through the turbine stages, its thermodynamic state drops below the critical point as it does work turning the turbine which turns the electrical generator from which power is ultimately extracted. The fluid at that point may be a mix of steam and liquid droplets as it passes into

3024-496: Was 11 feet higher than the level of the Columbia Lake. Baillie-Grohman arranged to have shipped to Golden a large amount of supplies, including complete equipment for a steam-powered sawmill, which was necessary to cut the lumber to build the canal locks and shelters for the workers at the canal. Baillie-Grohman also had hired a complement of workers, including a skilled millwright, to build the sawmill and supervise construction of

3080-475: Was 130 feet long, 30 feet longer than the lock. Armstrong solved this problem by ripping out the lock gates, building cofferdams out of ore sacks filed with sand, then blowing out the lower coffer dam with dynamite . Whatever commercial value the canal may have had was completely wiped out by the dynamite-aided transit of the North Star . The remains of the canal and the lock gradually deteriorated. In 1920, when

3136-652: Was completely encircled by the Columbia River, the Arrow Lakes, the Kootenay Lake and River, and finally the canal itself. When on July 29, 1889 complete, the canal was 5,049  ft (1,539  m ) long and 45  ft (14  m ) wide. Baillie-Grohman had raised funds for the venture in England, and was reputed to have sunk a major part of his own considerable personal wealth into the financing syndicate. The locks alone cost $ 100,000, enough to build five or six steamboats

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