We all know that the industrial boiler always came with Tubes. By this tube, a boiler can be separated into two types. The first one is the Water Tube Boiler and the Second one is Fire Tube Boiler. It’s also very basic differences between boilers. In this article, we will learn about the Fire Tube Boiler.
Fire Tube Boiler
What is a Fire Tube Boiler?
In one sentence we can say, a Fire Tube Boiler is a type of boiler in which hot gases pass through the boiler fire tube and water pass through around the fire tube. It can be Horizontal, Vertical, Inclined Position, and External or Internally Fired. In the past, all over the world, this type of Boiler was used on virtually all steam locomotives in the horizontal “locomotive” form. Now it will be hard to find this type of steam locomotives.
For this type of boiler heat passes through the boiler drum or tube. For this reason, the Heating Surface of the Fire Tube Boiler is less than the Water Tube Boiler. Fire Tube Boiler generates less steam than Water Tube Boiler. Some experiments found that a Fire Tube Boiler can generate 18000 pounds (8164 Kg) of steam per hour.
When this Boiler was invented at that time it was a popular boiler for a different sector. In that time Wood, Saw Dust and Cola were used to burn to supply heat to the boiler. But now we use Pulverised Cola, Natural GAS, and Crude Oil as fuel for the Fire Tube Boiler. But nowadays this type of boiler is not as popular as before.
Working Principle of Fire Tube Boiler:
Let’s learn about the working principle of a locomotive-type boiler as an example. In this type of boiler, fuel is used to burn inside the Combustion Chamber or Fire Box. Hot combustion gases are produced from this section. The firebox use to surrounded by a cooling jacket of water which is connected to the long, cylindrical boiler shell. When combustion hot gases pass through the series of fire tubes, or flues and heat the surrounding water.
In this way, we can get our first level of steam. This generated steam is called wet or saturated steam. Then this saturated steam rises to the top point of this Fire Tube Boiler and is called the Steam Dome. It is a place where saturated steam is collected. This Dome is used to regulate the exit of the steam amount from the boiler.
From the Dome, steam is transferred to another furnace where it becomes superheated steam. Because in locomotive-type boilers saturated steam is not the working steam. When steam is superheated then it transfers to the engine cylinder to generate mechanical energy.
Types of Fire Tube Boiler:
There are a few types of Boiler available and those are –
Next time I will discuss all those types of Fire Tube boilers randomly in a different article.
