as are now made there is no injection of water during compression,
and the compressed air is cooled in a surface cooler, not by actual
mixture with a shower of cold water. Further, though the inter changer
is still used by some makers, it has been found by experience
that, with properly constructed valves and passages in the expansion
cylinder, there 15 no trouble from the formation of snow, when, as
is the general practice, the same air is used over and over again,
the compressor taking its supply from the insulated room. So
far as the air discharged from the expansion cylinder is concerned,
its humidity is precisely the same so long as its temperature and
pressure are the same, inasmuch as when discharged from the
expansion cylinder it is always in a saturated condition for that
temperature and pressure.
The ideal coefficient of performance is about 1, but the actual coefficient will be about § , after allowing for the losses incidental to working. In practice the air is compressed to about 50 lb per square inch above the atmosphere, its temperature rising to about 300° F. The compressed air then passes through coolers in which it is cooled to within about 5° of the initial temperature of the cooling water, and is deprived of a portion of its moisture, after which it is admitted into the expansion cylinder and expanded nearly to atmospheric pressure. The thermal equivalent of the power exerted on the piston is taken from the air, which, with cooling water at 60° F and after allowing for friction and other losses, is discharged at a temperature of 60° to 80° below zero F. according to the size of the machine. The pistons of the compression and expansion cylinders are connected to the same crankshaft, and the difference between the power expended in compression and that restored in expansion, plus the friction of the machine, is supplied by means of a steam engine coupled to the crankshaft, or by any other source of power. For marine purposes two complete machines are frequently mounted on one bed-plate and worked either together or separately.
In some machines used in the United States the cold air is not discharged into the rooms but is worked in a closed cycle, the rooms being cooled by means of overhead pipes through which the cold expanded air passes on its way back to the compressor.
Liquid M achines.-Machines of the second class may conveniently be divided into three types: (a) Those in which there is no recovery of the refrigerating agent, water being the agent employed; they will be dealt with as “Vacuum machines.” (b) Those in which the agent is recovered by means of mechanical compression; they are termed “Compression machines.” (c) Those in which the agent is recovered by means of absorption by a liquid; they are known as “ Absorption machines.” In the first class, since the refrigerating liquid is itself rejected, the only agent cheap enough to be employed is water. The vacuum boiling point of water varies with pressure; thus at mlfhilles- one atmosphere or 14~7 lb per square inch it is 212° F., whereas at a pressure of -o85 lb per square inch it is 32°, and at lower pressures there is a still further fall in temperature. This property is made use of in vacuum machines. Water at ordinary temperature, say 6o°, is placed in an air-tight glass or insulated vessel, and when the pressure is reduced by means of a vacuum pump it begins to boil, the heat necessary for evaporation being taken from the water itself. The pressure being still further reduced, the temperature is gradually lowered until the freezing-point is reached and ice formed, when about one-sixth of the original volume has been evaporated.
The earliest machine of this kind appears to have been made in 1755 by Dr. William Cullen, who produced the vacuum by means of a pump alone. In 1810 Sir John Leslie combined with the air pump a vessel containing strong sulphuric acid for absorbing the vapour from the air, and is said to have succeeded in producing I to 1% lb of ice in a single operation. E. C. Carre later adopted the same principle. In 1878 F. Windhausen patented a vacuum machine for producing ice in large quantities, and in 1881 one of these machines, said to be capable of making about 12 tons of ice per day, was put to work in London. The installation was fully described by Carl Pieper (Trans. Soc. of Engineers, 1882, p. 145) and by Dr. John Hopkinson (Journal of Soc. of Arts, 1882, vol. xxxi. p. 20). The (process, however, not being successful from a commercial point o view, was abandoned. At the present time vacuum machines are only employed for domestic purposes. The hand apparatus invented by H. A. Fleuss consists o a vacuum pump capable of reducing the air pressure to a fraction of a millimetre, the suction pipe of which is connected first with a vessel containing sulphuric acid, and second with the vessel containing the water to be frozen. Both these vessels are mounted on a rocking base, so that the acid can be thoroughly agitated while the machine is being worked. As soon as the pump has sufficiently exhausted the air from the vessel containing the water, vapour is rapidly given off and is absorbed by the acid until sufficient heat has been abstracted to bring about the desired reduction in temperature, the acid becoming heated by the absorption of water vapour, while the water freezes. The small Fleuss machine will produce about Ii lb of ice in one operation of 20 minutes. Iced water 1n a carafe for drinking purposes can be produced in about three minutes. The acid vessel holds 9 lb of acid, and nearly 3 lb of ice can be made for each 1 lb of acid before the acid has become too weak to do further duty. Another machine, which can be easily worked by a boy, will produce 20 to 30 lb of ice in one hour, and is perhaps the largest size practicable with this method of freezing. The temperature attainable depend son the strength and condition of the sulphuric acid; ordinarily it can be reduced to zero F., and temperatures 20° lower have frequently been obtained. Though prior to 1834 several suggestions had been made with regard to the production of ice and the cooling of liquids by the evaporation of a more volatile liquid than water, the camp;-eg. first machine actually constructed and put to work SMH was made by John Hague in that year from the designs """°"'”"'of Jacob Perkins (Journal of Soc. of Arts, 1882, vol. xxxi. p. 77). This machine, though never used commercially, is the parent of all modern compression machines. Perkins in his patent specification states that the volatile fluid is by preference ether. In 1856 and 1857 James Harrison of Geelong, Victoria, patented a machine embodying the same principle as that of Perkins, but worked out in a much more complete and practical manner. It is stated that these machines were first made in New South Wales in 18 59, but the first Harrison machine adopted successfully for industrial purposes in England was applied in the year 1861 for cooling oil in order to extract the paraffin. In Harrison's machine the agent used was ether (C2H5)2O. Improvements were made by Siebe & Company of London, and a considerable number of ether machines both for ice-making and refrigerating purposes were supplied by that firm and others up to the year 1880. In 1870 the subject of refrigeration was investigated by Professor Carl Linde of Munich, who was the first to consider the question from a thermodynamic point of view. He dealt with the coefficient of performance as a common basis of comparison for all machines, and showed that the compression vapour machine more nearly reached the theoretic maximum than any other (Bayerisches Industrie und Gewerbeblatt, 1870 and 1871). Linde also examined the physical properties of various liquids, and, after making trials with methylic ether in 1872, built his first ammonia compression machine in 1873. Since then the ammonia compression machine has been most widely adopted, though the carbonic acid machine, also compression, which was first made in 1880 from Linde's designs, is now used to a considerable extent, especially on board ship. Compressor
T2 I.
Condenser Refrigerator
roi
Regulating Valve
FIG. 2.-Vapour Compression Machine.
A diagram of a vapour compression machine is shown in fig. 2. There are three principal parts, a refrigerator or evaporator, a compression pump, and a condenser. The refrigerator, which
