History
The first regenerator was invented by Rev. Robert Stirling in 1816, and is commonly found as a component of his Stirling engine. The simplest Stirlings, and most models, use a less efficient but simpler to construct, displacer instead.
Later applications included the blast furnace process known as hot blast and the Siemens regenerative furnace for making steel, where the hot exhaust gases from combustion are passed through firebrick regenerative chambers, which are thus heated. The flow is then reversed, so that the heated bricks preheat the fuel.
Edward Alfred Cowper applied the regeneration principle to blast furnaces, in the form of the "Cowper stove", patented in 1856. This is almost invariably used with blast furnaces to this day.
Read more about this topic: Regenerative Heat Exchanger
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)