A blowing engine is a large stationary steam engine

Stationary steam engine

Stationary steam engines are fixed steam engines used for pumping or driving mills and factories, and for power generation. They are distinct from locomotive engines used on railways, traction engines for heavy steam haulage on roads, steam cars , agricultural engines used for ploughing or...

 directly coupled to air pumping cylinder

Reciprocating compressor

A reciprocating compressor or piston compressor is a positive-displacement compressor that uses pistons driven by a crankshaft to deliver gases at high pressure....

s. They deliver a very large quantity of air at a pressure lower than an air compressor

Air compressor

An air compressor is a device that converts power into kinetic energy by compressing and pressurizing air, which, on command, can be released in quick bursts...

, but greater than a centrifugal fan

Centrifugal fan

A centrifugal fan is a mechanical device for moving air or other gases. It has a fan wheel composed of a number of fan blades, or ribs, mounted around a hub. As shown in Figure 1, the hub turns on a driveshaft that passes through the fan housing...

.

Blowing engines are used to provide the air blast for furnaces, blast furnace

Blast furnace

A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally iron.In a blast furnace, fuel and ore and flux are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while air is blown into the bottom of the chamber, so that the chemical reactions...

s and other forms of smelter.

Waterwheel engines

The very first blowing engines were the blowing house

Blowing House

A blowing house or blowing mill was a building used for smelting tin in Cornwall and on Dartmoor in Devon, in South West England. Blowing houses contained a furnace and a pair of bellows that were powered by an adjacent water wheel, and they were in use from the early 14th century until they were...

s: bellow

Bellow

- People :* Adam Bellow, vice president/executive editor at Collins Books* Alexandra Bellow , mathematician* Saul Bellow , American writer born in Canada of Russian-Jewish origin...

s, driven by waterwheels.

Smelters are most economically located near the source of their ore

Ore

An ore is a type of rock that contains minerals with important elements including metals. The ores are extracted through mining; these are then refined to extract the valuable element....

, 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

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 water pumps, mostly for draining mines...

. 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

Coalbrookdale is a village in the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, England, containing a settlement of great significance in the history of iron ore smelting. This is where iron ore was first smelted by Abraham Darby using easily mined "coking coal". The coal was drawn from drift mines in the sides...

 and as improvements to the Carron Ironworks on the Clyde

River Clyde

The River Clyde is a major river in Scotland. It is the ninth longest river in the United Kingdom, and the third longest in Scotland. Flowing through the major city of Glasgow, it was an important river for shipbuilding and trade in the British Empire....

 in 1765.

Beam blowing engines

Early steam prime mover

Prime mover

Prime mover may refer to:* A machine that transforms energy from thermal, electrical or pressure form to mechanical form, typically an engine or turbine- Philosophy and theology :...

s were beam engine

Beam engine

A beam engine is a type of steam engine where a pivoted overhead beam is used to apply the force from a vertical piston to a vertical connecting rod. This configuration, with the engine directly driving a pump, was first used by Thomas Newcomen around 1705 to remove water from mines in Cornwall...

s, firstly of the non-rotative (i.e. solely reciprocating) and later the rotative type (i.e. driving a flywheel

Flywheel

A flywheel is a rotating mechanical device that is used to store rotational energy. Flywheels have a significant moment of inertia, and thus resist changes in rotational speed. The amount of energy stored in a flywheel is proportional to the square of its rotational speed...

). 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

Joshua Field (engineer)

Joshua Field was a British civil engineer and mechanical engineer.Field was born in Hackney in 1786, his father was John Field a corn and seed merchant who was later to become Master of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors...

 describes an 1821 trip to Foster, Rastrick & Co.

Foster, Rastrick and Company

Foster, Rastrick and Company was one of the pioneering steam locomotive manufacturing companies of England. It was based in Stourbridge, Worcestershire, now West Midlands....

 of Stourbridge

Stourbridge

Stourbridge is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, in the West Midlands of England. Historically part of Worcestershire, Stourbridge was a centre of glass making, and today includes the suburbs of Amblecote, Lye, Norton, Oldswinford, Pedmore, Wollaston, Wollescote and Wordsley The...

, 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 open air museum

Open air museum

An open-air museum is a distinct type of museum exhibiting its collections out-of-doors. The first open-air museums were established in Scandinavia towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the concept soon spread throughout Europe and North America. Open-air museums are variously known as...

, Ironbridge Gorge

Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust

Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust is an industrial heritage organisation which runs ten museums and manages 35 historic sites within the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, England, widely considered as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution....

. 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 Doric

Doric order

The Doric order was one of the three orders or organizational systems of ancient Greek or classical architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian.-History:...

 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

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 and blast engines and operated a private railway network...

, 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 (later to form part of Allis-Chalmers

Allis-Chalmers

The Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co. of West Allis, Wisconsin, is an American company known for its past as a manufacturer with diverse interests, perhaps most famous for their bright Persian Orange farm tractors...

). The steam cylinder (lower) is 42 inches (1.1 m) diameter, the air cylinder (upper) 84 inches (2.1 m) and both with a stroke of 60 inches (1.5 m).

The steam cylinder has Reynolds-Corliss valve gear

Corliss Steam Engine

A Corliss steam engine is a steam engine, fitted with rotary valves and with variable valve timing patented in 1849, invented by and named after the American engineer George Henry Corliss in Providence, Rhode Island....

, driven via a bevel

Bevel gear

Bevel gears are gears where the axes of the two shafts intersect and the tooth-bearing faces of the gears themselves are conically shaped.Bevel gears are most often mounted on shafts that are 90 degrees apart, but can be designed to work at other angles as well...

-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

Corliss Steam Engine

A Corliss steam engine is a steam engine, fitted with rotary valves and with variable valve timing patented in 1849, invented by and named after the American engineer George Henry Corliss in Providence, Rhode Island....

, with improved trip gear capable of working at higher speeds. The air valves are also driven by eccentrics

Eccentric (mechanism)

In mechanical engineering, an eccentric is a circular disk solidly fixed to a rotating axle with its centre offset from that of the axle ....

 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 are there merely to smooth the action of the engine. To permit adjustment though, the steam piston rod only goes as far as the crosshead and above this there are twinned rods to the air piston. The flywheel shaft is mounted below the steam piston, the paired connecting rod

Connecting rod

In a reciprocating piston engine, the connecting rod or conrod connects the piston to the crank or crankshaft. Together with the crank, they form a simple mechanism that converts linear motion into rotating motion....

s driving downwards and backwards to make this a return connecting rod engine.

Replacement by rotary blowers

As blast furnaces re-equipped after World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, the favoured power source was increasingly either the diesel engine

Diesel engine

A diesel engine is an internal combustion engine that uses the heat of compression to initiate ignition to burn the fuel, which is injected into the combustion chamber...

, or the electric motor

Electric motor

An electric motor converts electrical energy into mechanical energy.Most electric motors operate through the interaction of magnetic fields and current-carrying conductors to generate force...

. These both had a rotary output, which worked well with contemporary developments in centrifugal fan

Centrifugal fan

A centrifugal fan is a mechanical device for moving air or other gases. It has a fan wheel composed of a number of fan blades, or ribs, mounted around a hub. As shown in Figure 1, the hub turns on a driveshaft that passes through the fan housing...

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

Western world

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...

 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 open air museum

Open air museum

An open-air museum is a distinct type of museum exhibiting its collections out-of-doors. The first open-air museums were established in Scandinavia towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the concept soon spread throughout Europe and North America. Open-air museums are variously known as...

, Ironbridge Gorge

Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust

Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust is an industrial heritage organisation which runs ten museums and manages 35 historic sites within the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, England, widely considered as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution....

. The beam engines "David & Sampson" are scheduled Ancient Monument

Ancient monument

An ancient monument is an early historical structure or monument worthy of preservation and study due to archaeological or heritage interest. In the United Kingdom it is a legal term, differing from the American term National Monument in being far more numerous and always man-made...

s.

An 1817 beam blowing engine by Boulton & Watt, formerly used at the Netherton

Netherton, West Midlands

Netherton is a town in the West Midlands within the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. It lies around south of the town of Dudley and north of Cradley Heath...

 ironworks of M W Grazebrook, now decorates Dartmouth Circus, a traffic island at the start of the A38(M) motorway

A38(M) motorway

The A38, also known as the Aston Expressway, is a motorway in Birmingham, England. It is long and was opened on 24 May 1972. It forms part of the much longer A38 route....

in Birmingham (see picture above, location: 52.492537°N 1.888189°W).