Boilers history

Simple Boiler
What Is a Boiler?

A boiler is a box formed by tubes that uses fire inside that box to
heat water into steam. Surrounding those tubes and completely
encasing the tube walls and the firebox area are the bril (brick,
refractory, insulation, and lagging) materials. The number and size
of the tubes, the type of fuel, and the overall physical dimensions of
the boiler will all vary depending on what the boiler is designed to
produce (water, steam, or heat) and the industry it is intended to
serve (e.g., utility, industrial, medical).
 Boiler history
The steam-generating boilers roots go
back to the late 1700s and early 1800s
with the development of the kettle-type boiler,
which simply boiled water into steam. The
water was placed above a fire box and then
boiled into steam. It wasnt until around 1867, with the development of
the convection boiler, that the steam-generating industry began.

It may be debated who developed the first steam-generating boiler;

however, most will agree that George Babcock and Steven Wilcox were
two of the founding fathers of the steam-generating boiler. They were
the first to patent their boiler design, which used tubes inside a firebrick-
walled structure to generate steam, in 1867, and they formed Babcock &
Wilcox Company in New York City in 1891. Their first boilers were
quite small, used lump coal, fired by hand, and operated at a very low
rate of heat input. The solid firebrick walls that formed the enclosure for
the unit were necessary because they helped the combustion process by
reradiating heat back into the furnace area.
Boiler history (contd.,)
The Stirling Boiler Company, owned by O.C. Barber and named for
the street (Stirling Avenue) the facility was on in Barberton, south
Africa, also began making boilers in 1891. (Alan Stirling (1844-1927)
designed his first boiler in 1883, and in 1888 established the Stirling Boiler
Company in New York City).Their eighth Stirling boiler design was called
the H-type boiler (h being the eighth letter in the alphabet) and
had a brick setting design. The Stirling boiler was much larger than
the Babcock & Wilcox boiler and used three drums to help circulate
the water and steam flow throughout the boiler.
In 1907, the Stirling Boiler Company merged with the Babcock &
Wilcox Company. They renamed their boiler the H-type Stirling, and
it became one of best-selling boilers of its time, probably because
of its ability to produce up to 50,000 pounds of steam per hour.
Boiler history (contd.,)
However, they were not the only boiler manufacturers during the
late 1800s.
The Grieve Grate Company and the American Stoker Company were
also making boilers of similar all-brick-wall design.
They both used a traveling or screw-type grate at the bottom of the
boiler to transport the fuel (lump coal) across the inside of the
boiler.
As the fuel traveled across the inside of the boiler, it was burned
and the ash or un-burned fuel would drop into a hopper.
These two companies later formed the Combustion Engineering
Company in 1912.
The new Combustion Engineering Company offered their version of
the Grieve and American Stoker boilers and called it the Type E
stoker boiler.
A History Rooted in Electrical Power by using
Steam boilers ( Coal fuel used)

Advances in alternating current (AC) technology opened up new realms for

power generation. Hydropower, for example, marked several milestones
between 1890 and 1900 in Oregon, Colorado, Croatia (where the first
complete multiphase AC system was demonstrated in 1895), at Niagara
Falls, and in Japan.
By then, however, coal power generations place in powers history had
already been firmly established. The first coal-fired steam generators
provided low-pressure saturated or slightly superheated steam for steam
engines driving direct current (DC) dynamos.
Sir Charles Parsons, who built the first steam turbine generator (with a
thermal efficiency of just 1.6%) in 1884, improved its efficiency two years
later by introducing the first condensing turbine, which drove an AC
generator. By the early 1900s, coal-fired power units featured outputs in
the 1 MW to 10 MW range, outfitted with a steam generator, an
economizer, evaporator, and a superheater section.
A History Rooted in Electrical Power by using Steam boilers ( Coal fuel used)
(contd.,)

By the 1910s, the coal-fired power plant cycle was improved even more by
the introduction of turbines with steam extractions for feedwater heating
and steam generators equipped with air preheatersall which boosted
net efficiency to about 15%.
The demonstration of pulverized coal steam generators at the Oneida
Street Station in Wisconsin in 1919 vastly improved coal combustion,
allowing for bigger boilers (Figure 2). In the 1920s, another technological
boost came with the advent of once-through boiler applications and
reheat steam power plants, along with the Benson steam generator, which
was built in 1927.
Reheat steam turbines became the norm in the 1930s, when unit ratings
soared to a 300-MW output level. Main steam temperatures consistently
increased through the 1940s, and the decade also ushered in the first
attempts to clean flue gas with dust removal. The 1950s and 1960s were
characterized by more technical achievements to improve efficiency
including construction of the first once-through steam generator with a
supercritical main steam pressure.
Steam boilers Locomotive
The first steam locomotive, made by Richard Trevithick, first operated on 21
February 1804, three years after the road locomotive he made in 1801. The first
commercially successful steam locomotive was created in 181213 by John
Blenkinsop. Built by George Stephenson and his son Robert's company Rober
Stephenson and Company, the Locomotion No. 1 is the first steam locomotive to
carry passengers on a public rail line, the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825.

Steam locomotives were first developed in Great Britain during the early 19th
century and used for railway transport until the middle of the 20th century. From
the early 1900s they were gradually superseded by electric and diesel locomotives,
with railways fully converting to electric and diesel power beginning in the late
1930s. The majority of steam locomotives were retired from regular service by the
1980s, though several continue to run on tourist and heritage lines.
Trevithick in 1892
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