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A blowing engine is a large stationary steam engine or
internal combustion engine An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal combus ...
directly coupled to air pumping cylinders. They deliver a very large quantity of air at a pressure lower than an
air compressor An air compressor is a pneumatic device that converts power (using an electric motor, diesel or gasoline engine, etc.) into potential energy stored in pressurized air (i.e., compressed air). By one of several methods, an air compressor forces m ...
, but greater than a
centrifugal fan A centrifugal fan is a mechanical device for moving air or other gases in a direction at an angle to the incoming fluid. Centrifugal fans often contain a ducted housing to direct outgoing air in a specific direction or across a heat sink; such ...
. Blowing engines are majorly used to provide the air blast for furnaces, blast furnaces and other forms of smelter.


Waterwheel engines

The very first blowing engines were the blowing houses:
bellows A bellows or pair of bellows is a device constructed to furnish a strong blast of air. The simplest type consists of a flexible bag comprising a pair of rigid boards with handles joined by flexible leather sides enclosing an approximately airtigh ...
, driven by
waterwheel A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or buckets ...
s. Smelters are most economically located near the source of their
ore Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically containing metals, that can be mined, treated and sold at a profit.Encyclopædia Britannica. "Ore". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 7 Apr ...
, which may not have suitable water power available nearby. There is also the risk of drought interrupting the water supply, or of expanding demand for the furnace outstripping the available water capacity. These restrictions led to the very earliest form of steam engine used for power generation rather than pumping, the
water-returning engine A water-returning engine was an early form of stationary steam engine, developed at the start of the Industrial Revolution in the middle of the 18th century. The first beam engines did not generate power by rotating a shaft but were developed as wat ...
. With this engine, a steam pump was used to raise water that in turn drove a waterwheel and thus the machinery. Water from the wheel was then returned by the pump. These early steam engines were only suitable for pumping water, and could not be connected directly to the machinery. The first practical examples of these engines were installed in 1742 at
Coalbrookdale Coalbrookdale is a village in the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, England, containing a settlement of great significance in the history of iron ore smelting. It lies within the civil parish called the Gorge. This is where iron ore was first s ...
and as improvements to the Carron Ironworks on the
Clyde Clyde may refer to: People * Clyde (given name) * Clyde (surname) Places For townships see also Clyde Township Australia * Clyde, New South Wales * Clyde, Victoria * Clyde River, New South Wales Canada * Clyde, Alberta * Clyde, Ontario, a tow ...
in 1765.


Beam blowing engines

Early steam
prime mover Prime mover may refer to: Philosophy *Unmoved mover, a concept in Aristotle's writings Engineering * Prime mover (engine), motor, a machine that converts various other forms of energy (chemical, electrical, fluid pressure/flow, etc) into energy ...
s were beam engines, firstly of the non-rotative (i.e. solely reciprocating) and later the rotative type (i.e. driving a
flywheel A flywheel is a mechanical device which uses the conservation of angular momentum to store rotational energy; a form of kinetic energy proportional to the product of its moment of inertia and the square of its rotational speed. In particular, as ...
). Both of these were used as blowing engines, usually by coupling an air cylinder to the far end of the beam from the steam cylinder. Joshua Field describes an 1821 trip to Foster, Rastrick & Co. of
Stourbridge Stourbridge is a market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley in the West Midlands, England, situated on the River Stour. Historically in Worcestershire, it was the centre of British glass making during the Industrial Revolution. The 20 ...
, where he observed eight large beam engines, one of 30 hp working a blowing cylinder of 5 feet diameter and 6 feet stroke. Where the later beam engines drove flywheels, this was useful for providing a more even action to the engine. The air cylinder was still driven by the beam alone and the flywheel was used solely as a flywheel, not driving an output shaft. A well-known surviving example of this type are the paired beam engines ''"David & Sampson"'', now preserved at
Blists Hill Blists Hill Victorian Town is an open-air museum built on a former industrial complex located in the Madeley area of Telford, Shropshire, England. The museum attempts to recreate the sights, sounds and smells of a Victorian Shropshire town ...
open-air museum An open-air museum (or open air museum) is a museum that exhibits collections of buildings and artifacts out-of-doors. It is also frequently known as a museum of buildings or a folk museum. Definition Open air is “the unconfined atmosphere� ...
, Ironbridge Gorge. These are a pair of single-cylinder condensing beam engines, each driving an air cylinder by their own beam, but sharing a single flywheel between them. They are notable for their decorative
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arches. The engines had a long working life: 50 years of primary service from 1851 providing the blast for the Priors Lee furnaces of the
Lilleshall Company The Lilleshall Company was a large engineering company in Oakengates Shropshire founded in 1802. Its operations included mechanical engineering, coal mining, iron and steel making and brickworks. The company was noted for its winding, pumping an ...
, then a further 50 years until the plant's closure as reserve engines, still being worked occasionally.


Semi-rotative blowing engines

The large vertical blowing engine illustrated at the top was built in the 1890s by E. P. Allis Co. of
Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...
(later to form part of
Allis-Chalmers Allis-Chalmers was a U.S. manufacturer of machinery for various industries. Its business lines included agricultural equipment, construction equipment, power generation and power transmission equipment, and machinery for use in industrial set ...
). The steam cylinder (lower) is diameter, the air cylinder (upper) and both with a stroke of . The steam cylinder has Reynolds-Corliss valve gear, driven via a bevel-driven auxiliary shaft beneath, at right-angles to the crankshaft. This also means that the Corliss' wrist plate is at right-angles to the flywheel, rather than parallel as is usual. Edwin Reynolds was the designer of the Allis company and in 1876 had developed an improved version of the Corliss valvegear, with improved trip gear capable of working at higher speeds. Hawkins, New Catechism of the Steam Engine, p.225, p.172 The air valves are also driven by eccentrics from this same shaft. Like the beam engines, the main force of the piston is transmitted to the air cylinder by a purely reciprocating action and the flywheels exist to smooth the action of the engine. To permit adjustment, the steam piston rod only goes as far as the crosshead. Above this are twinned rods to the air piston. The flywheel shaft is mounted below the steam piston, the paired connecting rods driving downwards and backwards to make this a
return connecting rod engine A return connecting rod, return piston rod or (in marine parlance) double piston rod engine or back-acting engine is a particular layout for a steam engine. The key attribute of this layout is that the piston rod emerges from the cylinder to the c ...
.


Internal combustion blowing engines

In the late 1800s, internal combustion
gas engine A gas engine is an internal combustion engine that runs on a gaseous fuel, such as coal gas, producer gas, biogas, landfill gas or natural gas. In the United Kingdom, the term is unambiguous. In the United States, due to the widespread use of ...
s were developed to burn gasses produced from blast furnaces, eliminating the need for fuel for steam boilers and increasing efficiency.
Bethlehem Steel The Bethlehem Steel Corporation was an American steelmaking company headquartered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. For most of the 20th century, it was one of the world's largest steel producing and shipbuilding companies. At the height of its succe ...
was one such company to employ this technology. Huge, usually single-cylinder horizontal engines burned
blast furnace gas Blast furnace gas (BFG) is a by-product of blast furnaces that is generated when the iron ore is reduced with coke to metallic iron. It has a very low heating value, about 93  BTU/cubic foot (3.5 MJ/m3), because it consists of about 51 ...
. SA John Cockerill of Belgium and
Körting Körting is a surname. Notable people with the name include: * Georg Körting (1844–1919), German Chief Surgeon General of the Guards Corps in the First World War * Gustav Körting (1845–1913), German philologist * Heinrich Körting (1859–189 ...
of
Hannover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...
were both noted makers of such engines. There are some efforts underway to restore a few of these engines. A few firms still manufacture and install multi cylinder internal combustion engines to burn waste gasses today.


Replacement by rotary blowers

As blast furnaces re-equipped after
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the favoured power source was either the
diesel engine The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is a so-call ...
or the
electric motor An electric motor is an Electric machine, electrical machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. Most electric motors operate through the interaction between the motor's magnetic field and electric current in a Electromagneti ...
. These both had a rotary output, which worked well with contemporary developments in
centrifugal fan A centrifugal fan is a mechanical device for moving air or other gases in a direction at an angle to the incoming fluid. Centrifugal fans often contain a ducted housing to direct outgoing air in a specific direction or across a heat sink; such ...
s capable of handling the huge volumes of air. Although the reciprocating steam blowing engine continued where it was already in use, they were rarely installed after the war. These older plants began to close in the 1950s and numbers were drastically reduced throughout the
West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...
during the 1970s. Blowing engines of this form are now rare.


Surviving examples today

Examples of both a beam blowing engine and a vertical engine may be seen at the
Blists Hill Blists Hill Victorian Town is an open-air museum built on a former industrial complex located in the Madeley area of Telford, Shropshire, England. The museum attempts to recreate the sights, sounds and smells of a Victorian Shropshire town ...
open-air museum An open-air museum (or open air museum) is a museum that exhibits collections of buildings and artifacts out-of-doors. It is also frequently known as a museum of buildings or a folk museum. Definition Open air is “the unconfined atmosphere� ...
, Ironbridge Gorge. The beam engines ''"David & Sampson"'' are
scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...
s. An 1817 beam blowing engine by
Boulton & Watt Boulton & Watt was an early British engineering and manufacturing firm in the business of designing and making marine and stationary steam engines. Founded in the English West Midlands around Birmingham in 1775 as a partnership between the Eng ...
, formerly used at the Netherton ironworks of M W Grazebrook, now decorates Dartmouth Circus, a traffic island at the start of the A38(M) motorway in Birmingham (see picture above, location: ).


References

{{Authority control Stationary steam engines Beam engines Steam engines Blast furnaces Steelmaking