When he walked to the Mechanical Experimental Building, Wang Quan looked up and saw that it was a building about three stories high. But when he walked into the building, it was actually a very high single-story warehouse-style building with a corridor hanging on the second floor around it. There were rooms in the direction of the corridor to the outside, and the corridor to the inner circle was railings.

In the middle is a three-story atrium. A large group of people in the atrium are busy working. The sound of "sonorous" ironclad and the friction of the grinding wheels are endless, and the collision of various metal instruments is endless.

Under the command of scientific and technological personnel, the craftsmen were waving the hammer to hit the iron, and some people used hand-crank grinders to process various parts. In the middle of the atrium, there was a boiler, and a burning fire was burning below the boiler. A pipe was connected from the boiler, and only a sound of water vapor was heard. White mist was constantly sprayed from the outlet of the pipe, and the white mist sprayed onto a blade wheel, which rotated at high speed.

"It's so amazing. When the water is boiled, it can actually drive the mechanical rotation." Wang Quan said.

Zhao Peng explained: "When water is heated, it becomes water vapor. Because gas of the same weight is much heavier than liquid, when water becomes water vapor, the volume expands violently, which creates thrust, which can promote the operation of the machinery."

The principle of the steam engine is actually very simple. In later generations, even a primary school student understood the principle of the steam engine. However, in this era, there were not many people who could know that steam can be converted into power. In fact, these scientific and technological personnel present only knew this after being inspired by Zhao Peng.

In fact, what Wang Quan and Chen Xinyuan saw were the most primitive steam turbine. The principle of a steam turbine is simpler than a steam engine. The steam turbine uses high-pressure steam to directly drive the steam turbine, directly turning the energy of the steam into rotating energy.

The principle of a steam engine is a little more complicated. It is necessary to first turn the energy of high-pressure steam into the energy of back and forth linear motion, and then turn the linear motion of back and forth into circular motion through the connecting rod crankshaft.

The steam engine needs various components such as cylinders, connecting rods, crankshafts, flywheels, eccentrics, cams, steam control valves, etc. The principle is much more complicated than that of a steam turbine. The steam turbine only has blades and rotors, which sounds very simple. But why in the original historical space and time, the steam turbine that was put into use was born nearly two hundred years later than the steam engine.

Originally, in time and space, the world's first steam engine was invented in 1698. If Zhao Peng had not developed according to the original historical process, steam engines would have been born abroad in another 49 years; and the steam turbine was not until 1884 that the first steam turbine that could be put into practice appeared in the world.

The so-called "steam turbine" currently placed in the mechanical laboratory of the Daming Academy of Sciences is actually impossible to put into practice, because high-pressure steam is sprayed out from the simplest nozzle, directly pushing the blades, and the blades pushing the flywheel to rotate. In this most primitive steam turbine, steam does not do work in a sealed environment, and its energy is not constrained, so it is seriously wasted energy and has very low efficiency.

In order to improve the efficiency of steam, Zhao Peng still asked mechanical researchers from the Academy of Sciences to find ways to make high-pressure steam work in a sealed environment in order to make the steam play its maximum effect.

Researchers thought of letting high-pressure steam directly drive the blades to rotate in a sealed environment, but the experiment failed. In the original space-time, scientists built a turbine based on the principle of propellers, which made the steam turbine successful. Later, in 1884, Sweden's Karl Laval built a series steam turbine, which greatly improved the efficiency.

With current technology, it is definitely impossible to build a steam turbine that can be put into use, so Zhao Peng still asked scientific researchers to return to the path of using pistons to push the connecting rods and build a steam engine.

Under the guidance of scientific and technological personnel, the craftsmen were polishing the inner wall of a newly built cylinder with a hydraulic boring machine. Another craftsman measured the inner wall of a fully built cylinder. He was holding a pair of large vernier calipers in his hand, measuring the diameter of the inner wall of the cylinder, and then recording the data.

According to the recorded data, the craftsmen made a pair of molds used to cast pistons.

Zhao Peng's mechanical laboratory uses the most advanced sand mold casting method to produce pistons of steam engines. The craftsmen first made a wooden piston sample according to the size, then poured the prepared quartz sand into an iron mold, then put the wooden piston sample into the quartz sand, then took the sample and covered the cover of the iron mold, which obtained the sand mold.

Sand molds and mud molds are both disposable molds. Once the casting is completed, the mold is disassembled and the castings are taken out, and the mold will be destroyed. However, sand molds are much more advanced than mud molds, because sand molds can first solve the problem of whitening of castings. Secondly, sand molds are made much faster than mud molds, and production efficiency is much higher.

The craftsmen put the cast sand mold on the ground, then opened the blast furnace door, poured the scorching white and bright molten iron into the sand mold. After being left for a while, the mold slowly cooled. After the mold cooled, the craftsmen opened the mold and cast it into a piston.

The cast piston was polished by craftsmen using a grinder, and the grinding was made of silver and the contact surface was as smooth as a mirror. Then they placed the piston into the cylinder. At this time, they found that there was still some error between the piston and the cylinder, and the piston was still a little larger than the inner wall of the cylinder, and it still needed to be polished.

When casting pistons, craftsmen would rather make the cast piston a little larger than the inner wall of the cylinder than make the piston much smaller than the inner wall of the cylinder, because if it is a little larger, the piston and the cylinder can be matched by polishing; if the cylinder is made smaller, it will be difficult to do.

Various accessories such as cylinder heads, connecting rods, crankshafts, flywheels, cams, eccentrics, slide stems, screws, nuts, etc. were also cast by craftsmen. Then, under the guidance of scientific and technological personnel, the craftsmen assembled these parts.

The assembled steam engine is connected together with a high-pressure boiler using metal steam pipes. Then the workers pour water into the boiler. When the water reaches the water level line, the workers close the valve and ignite the coal in the furnace room below the high-pressure boiler.

As the hand-crank blower continuously sent fresh air into the furnace room, the coal in the furnace room burned and began to heat the water in the high-pressure boiler. After about twenty minutes, the water in the high-pressure boiler opened, and the control valve made a sound of high-pressure steam squeezing the valve. At this moment, a worker opened the control valve.

Only a sound of high-pressure steam breaking through the valve was heard, and the steam rushed into the cylinder. The piston of the steam engine slowly moved, and the connecting rod drove the flywheel for half a turn. However, after only half a turn, the steam engine stopped, and white gas kept coming out of the valve, making a sound of high-pressure steam rubbing against the valve.

"The sliding valve is not designed in place, and can only supply steam in one direction, resulting in the cylinder piston of the steam engine being unable to reciprocate." Zhao Peng said as he listened to the sound of the valve.

The workers immediately closed the furnace chamber and let the fire inside gradually go out. At the same time, a worker closed the valve.
Chapter completed!