Fun Fact Miniseries (F2m) Water Engineering
Fun Fact #568
Steam Powered, Steam Powered, Steam Powered
When asked about what you rely upon in your daily life, you may think your essentials are your phone, car, or home. Yet one that often is forgotten is Water. Sure you need water to survive but it also appears in places you’d never expect, and for a while one of them was the driving force in the world.
. Although The Concept of Steam power has been around since the First Century, The First Successful Steam engine is still relatively new (history wise) having only been invented in 1712, by Tomas Newcomen. From Here they’d be improved by the famous James Watt, who added a separate condenser allowing it to be twice as efficient as earlier models and no longer need to be situated by Rivers and accelerating the Industrial Revolution. Later the Corliss steam engine came along to further improve things with a separate steam outlet and an automatic variable steam cut-off improving efficiency by an estimated 30% while becoming much smaller. While the engine continued to be improved past this with things like Governors, this efficiency and small size of the Corliss Engine meant that we finally move away from just running industrial machines and instead begin running Ships, Cars and even run a new Device: Trains.
Yet with all good things, there must eventually come an end, and so –baring some experimental attempts to bring back steam powered cars in California, and a singular Steam Engine company still making parts in Germany–Steam power today has almost all but vanished with the exception of its legacy: Steam Turbines.
Model of James Watt Double linkage Steam Engine
Fun Fact #569
Radiating Joy
When it comes to Nuclear Power the image that often appears in My mind is The Large smoke stacks they have, and yet that’s not what they are used for at all. Instead the Nuclear material heats up water to the point it would usually boil (it cant due to pressure) where the hot water is then moved into the next chamber where it opens up and is allowed to steam. This steam then pushes a turbine to generate power, before being recondensed to run through the cycle again.
Yet you do need to cool that water down again before it can be run through the reactor again. To accomplish this a separate set of water (cooling water) is run through pipes in the condenser to cool down the water used by the actual reactor. Once this Cooling water is hot though, its pumped to the cooling towers where its sprayed through “Fill” which separates the water into droplets to maximize surface area as it falls through cooler air back into the reservoir where its then pumped back through the condenser to cool the reactor water all over again. The shape of The Towers aides in this as their shape and open bases allow and actually help create a natural draft to draw cool air in at the base and expel the warm water out the top –along with a little steam.
Shockingly only a minority of Nuclear Powerplants in the world use cooling towers for the cooling water, with most using natural bodies of water like Lakes and rivers for it instead.
If you’re interested in learning more about how cooling towers work, The Youtube Channel “Real Engineering” just posted a wonderful video on it explaining it in far greater detail. He even demonstrates a home-made Cooling tower in his garage made from Acrylic to show all the processes on video safely. It's really cool.Thanks for reading and please have a wonderful day.
Fun Fact #570
The Delta Works
For centuries The Dutch and Frisians have been at war. Their foe is known as a real force of nature when it comes to European Conflicts and its name is The Sea. Yet this makes sense when you look into it (numbers from the year 1950) for 0.20% of the Netherlands was under sea level and more than 50% of the country is less than 1 meter (3.3 feet) above sea level. The Netherlands truly lives up to their name since “The Netherlands” means “The Lower Countries”
In short, Dams and Dykes have been the Dutch’s primary weapon in this campaign, and this only escalated after they teamed up with the Frisians. Over time their tech and methods have improved with perhaps their best example being how they empty the bays. Early on they used to empty them as fast as possible but this leaves exposed seabed which is infertile and practically useless. Instead they learned to pump the water slowly out so the level drops about 1 foot every 5 years. This delayed drainage allows the area to build up soil along the edges while still being a valuable resource for fishing and other related environmental industries. Centuries of this mindset have led The Dutch and Frisians to be some of the furthest ranged planners on the planet. The best example of this came from their most daring project yet.
After The North Sea Flood in 1953 left over half the country flooded for several weeks, the Dutch government sought to consolidate their gains against the sea and prevent such a disaster from ever occurring again, forming The Delta plan. This plan called for the use of Dykes, Dams, Sluices, Locks, Leevees, and Storm Surge barriers to make a multi-tiered defense against the Sea. The Plan was simple in theory, to create dams across the Frisian Islands and pump the water out from the bays to reclaim lands while the other tools helped reduce strain and give it fall back positions to buy time in case an evacuation ever needed to be called. Just 2 Problems, Just half the plan (The Delta Works) cost 20% of The Netherlands’ entire GDP over the next 25 years and was followed by the 2nd part The Zeiderzee Works which added another 50 years. Thankfully today the infrastructure is completed and in place but the complete drainage won’t be completed until early 2,200 (yes they’ve accounted for rising sea levels and maintenance). . . at least you can't say they didn't plan it out.
Yet even with this planning they had to save costs somewhere. When it was initially designed it was intended that the failure rate of either works would be once in every 10,000 years (with maintenance), but due to the sheer cost they scaled it back to an estimated failure rate of once every 2,000 years.. . That’s Insane! To put it simply, if you were to go back 2,000 years ago you’d be in 24AD when the Persians, The Han Chinese, and Roman Empires ruled the world and 9 years before The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ!
This is why it was such a big deal after Hurricane Katrina that the Netherlands offered to send its best engineers to conduct a 50 year plan to prevent Louisiana from being flooded from failed levees ever again. And also why the Netherlands was stunned by President George W. Bush’s refusal for them to do anything other than investigate what went wrong with the Levees. It actually is still a sore point to the Dutch today who thought it was a good way to support a close ally and finally pay back the US for its help funding the Delta Works with money from The Marshall Plan. In case you’re wondering, the Frisians don't care about this perceived slight, which makes sense given they tend to just want to be left alone.
Map of the Delta Works
Map of The Zuiderzee Works
