Port of Trieste - The Hydrodynamic Plant

The Hydrodynamic Plant

The hydrodynamic plant, built in 1890, is an important piece of industrial archaeology. The first alternators were indeed exhibited at the Paris Exhibition in 1881, while the first electric motor was invented by Galileo Ferraris in 1885. Together with Hamburg, Buenos Aires, Calcutta and Genoa, Trieste was one of the first ports in the world to be equipped with a hydrodynamic plant.

The building is located behind the pier and is characterised by a high brick smokestack and two square towers at the sides of the main facade.

The plant, which ceased to be used in 1983, took the water from the water system and supplied energy to the different points of consumption. It was, therefore, a centralised energy generator, which operated the quay cranes, the external cranes and the internal hoists of the port warehouses.

A series of Cornish two fire-tube boilers, with a 2,10m diameter and a 10m length, built by St. Jashka & Sohn from Vienna, produced steam with a pressure of 7 atmospheres. The steam was delivered to four main machines and an auxiliary one, all manufactured by Machinenbau Aktien Gesellschaft vormals Breitfeld, Danek & Com. Prag-Karolinenthal.

The main machines had a higher motive part and a lower operating one. The motive part - a steam double expansion 25 HP machine - had a central high pressure cylinder with a 450mm diameter and two lateral low pressure ones with a 600 mm diameter. A system of crankshaft rods ensured the correct timing of the three cylinders. Pressure was kept constant by means of hydraulic accumulators. Two of them were located in the towers of the plant and one was situated in the tower near the port gates, in a more central position.

Pressurised water was distributed along the port main axis through a 6,8 km long system of cast-iron pipes, installed in underground passages that could be inspected. The main pipeline branched out into secondary pipes connected to the individual points of consumption. In the years between 1920 and 1939 the plant operated 83 quay cranes, 31 external cranes for the warehouses and 57 hoists.

The hydrodynamic plant - a rare example of machines that worked for more than a century - is located in a Rundbogenstil building, an architectural style that was a German version of Romanesque, very popular at the time.