Page 11 - Piston Engine-Based Power Plants

4 Piston Engine-Based Power Plants

working fluid to generate a pressure or force to drive a piston through
one stroke of a cycle, with cooling water used to condense the steam
again during the second stroke of the cycle when atmospheric pressure
would return the piston to its starting point. Again, Papin does not
seem to have developed a practical engine based on this design but
another inventor did, Englishman Thomas Newcomen, who in 1712
published his design for an atmospheric engine, so called because one
side of the cylinder is open to the atmosphere, for use as a pump. This
device is now commonly called the Newcomen engine (Fig. 1.1).

The Newcomen engine was designed as a pump to remove water
from underground mine workings. The device consisted of a large cyl-
inder into which a piston was inserted from above, sealing the cylinder
from the top but with the top of the piston open to the atmosphere.
The piston was connected via a rod to a beam that operated through a

Figure 1.1 The Newcomen engine. Source: Wikipedia.