Abstract
One of the most extensive applications of the jet air-pump in industry is its employment for the production of draught for the furnaces of Lancashire type boilers.
The purpose of the work described in the paper was to investigate the conditions under which the requisite quantity of air can be supplied to the furnace of a boiler with minimum consumption of steam, and to examine the performance of a number of well-known and widely used furnace bars designed for this purpose.
Two well-defined stages can be discerned in the process: (1) the induction of air by the jet; and (2) the transfer and distribution of the air to the furnace grids and the fuel bed. These two stages, which to some extent are interdependent, nevertheless lend themselves to individual treatment, a method which was followed in this work.
With the induction process, guidance can be obtained from a theoretical analysis of the problem; and such an analysis was in fact used. For the transfer and distribution of the air to the grids and fuel bed, experiment alone can provide the required information.
The question of the “efficiency” of the system in the normally accepted sense of the term is discussed, and is shown to be irrelevant to this method of operation. Some such term as “coefficient of performance” is more useful, and better suited for the purpose.
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