Westcore Energy Ltd V.WTR.H

RE: RE: RE: RE: It's a proven fact!!!

[HighTest]

Not misinformed. Actually I had a good, long look. The history of steam power and the nearly universal switch to petroleum-based fuels is very interesting. The thermal efficiency of the three-cycle steam piston engines at almost 30% was and still is an amazing feat of engineering, especially considering the math and designs were all done by hand back then. The steam turbine engine, however, was such a vast improvement in getting power to the props that piston steam power was obsolete almost instantly. What the early turbines gave up in thermal efficiency they gained in raw power production. (You can only make a boiler and piston system so big). It wasn't too long before the thermal efficiency problem of steam turbines due to separate fuel-steam and power production sections would be addressed. Combining the combustion, pressure production, and the power production sections into a single unit required a new fuel type. The reduced danger and improved portability of liquid fuels in turbine engines made powdered coal technology and boilers obsolete even faster than steam piston engines went, except for locomotives where the issues were more economic than overall power production. A train can only go so fast safely, and the military (navy) were the main drivers of turbine technology in the early days, where personal danger (within reason) was an acceptable tradeoff for the protection of the country. Stationary power plants are pretty much the apex of coal power technology, since overall mass, size, and gross mechanical power delivery are not the prime engineering considerations. Cheerio! HT