Life in the washing machine 'spin cycle'

 "It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron." - H. L. Mencken

New Year 2023 Post

 "For what else is tragedy than the portrayal in tragic verse of the sufferings of men who have attached high value to external things?" - Epictetus

Boiler Drum Level Control

I've been working on this post about level control in steam boilers for a while now.  It looks like today is the day I'll finally manage to get that done.

Overhauling a Steam Locomotive

Saw this cool video on Boing Boing and had to share it.

This describes the process of overhauling a British steam locomotive.  It's fascinating to watch the craftsmen going about their work.  Obviously steam trains require a tremendous investment in man-hours.  According to the video, this entire process had to be repeated every 130,000 miles.  Ouch!

I don't care though.  They are still incredibly cool machines :)

The steam cycle

I have been meaning to do a post on the steam cycle, otherwise known as the Rankine Cycle. It's pretty simple to describe the four-step process. The complicated part is designing, maintaining, and operating the machinery that makes it happen continuously, year after year.

The water/steam cycle is the most practical and commonly used means of converting heat energy into electrical energy.  The process works like this:  Fuel is burned for heat.  The heat vaporizes a liquid (typically very pure water), which is then expanded through a steam turbine.  Lastly it is condensed at very low pressure to extract all possible thermal energy and also to re-use the pure water. 

Summer Vacation

The family just returned from summer vacation.  It was an exhausting whirlwind of a trip, and I don't intend to repeat that sort of vacation again.  It took 3 days of driving to get to SoCal, and 3 days to return, with a lot of side trips while we were there.  Disneyland, the Ringling Circus, Bakersfield, and Morro Bay.

Although we saw some really cool things and got to visit old friends, we didn't go anywhere that was nicer than where I live.  Hmmm.  Maybe that's why this is a vacation spot...

That said, I did get some really cool pictures of places that we visited.  One of those places was Bodie, California, a turn of the century ghost town.  There is a lot more there than the pictures posted here.  I just wanted to share the cool old steam and electric power stuff :)

Below, a skid-mounted boiler

A steam piston engine for running the mine elevator.  Note the journal for the shaft at the far end.

The flywheel and shaft that were attached to the steam engine.  This wheel is enormous.  The shaft is a foot across.



A small AC generator.  This is about 3 ft across.

We also went to Twin Lakes at Mammoth Village.  A very pretty place, although after a year of living in northern Idaho, the forests in California looked pretty sparse and dry.

 

On the way home, we drove over White's Pass, between Mt. Ranier to the north and Mt. St. Helens to the south.  Below is a photo of St. Helens.  Unfortunately, there was a lot of moisture haze in the air, so I didn't get a clear shot.  This is the northwest side of the mountain that blew out in 1980.

Mt. Ranier, another dangerous volcano.  The forest here is quite lush.

Upper Clear Creek Falls.  The water spreads way out, maybe 20 ft across and maybe an inch deep, before pooling together again at the bottom.

Lower Clear Creek Falls.



While we were at Morro Bay I happened to see DSRV-2, the "Avalon", on display.  This is a little electric deep-diving submarine.  "DSRV" stands for "Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle". 

During the cold war, the Navy had a DSRV stationed on each coast.   In the event a military submarine sunk, the Navy had the ability to load these into a cargo aircraft and quickly get it to the sunken boat, to hopefully rescue survivors.

Unfortunately for the crew of the submarine Kursk, this DSRV hatch would not have mated to the Russian submarine hatch.  Also if I recall correctly, the hatch was too damaged to open, probably due to hull flexing and deforming after impacting the bottom.

Here are the specs for DSRV-2.

Builder:	Lockheed Missiles and Space, Co., Sunnyvale, California, USA
Power Plant:	Electric motors, silver/zinc batteries, one shaft, 15 shaft horsepower (11 kW), four thrusters, 7.5 horsepower (6 kW).
Length:	49 ft (15 m)
Beam:	8 ft (2.4 m)
Displacement:	38 tons (39 metric tons)
Speed	4 knots (7 km/h)
Maximum depth:	5,000 ft (1500 m)
Sonar:	Search and navigation
Ships:	Mystic (DSRV 1)
	Avalon (DSRV 2)
Crew:	Two pilots, two rescue personnel and the capacity for 24 passengers

Side note:  A shipmate of mine transferred to this little guy back in the 1980's.  He said that he finally got a chance to look out at the ocean while submerged (military subs have no windows, for obvious reasons).  For his first dive, they took Avalon clear to the bottom off the coast of San Diego, put him in front of a window, then turned on the lights.  He said there was nothing to see but sand and a few empty beer cans.  Hahaha!