• Acceptance Essays
• American History
• Anatomy
• Animal Science
• Anthropology
• Arts
• Astronomy
• Aviation
• Beauty
• Biographies
• Book Reports
• Business
• Computers
• Creative Writing
• Current Events
• Economics
• Education
• Engineering
• English
• Environmental Science
• Ethics
• European History
• Film
• Foreign Languages
• Geography
• Government
• Health
• History
• Human Sexuality
• Legal Issues
• Marketing
• Mathematics
• Medicine
• Miscellaneous
• Music
• Mythology
• Philosophy
• Physiology
• Poetry
• Political Science
• Politics
• Psychology
• Religion
• Science
• Shakespeare
• Social Issues
• Sociology
• Speech
• Sports
• Supernatural
• Television
• Technology
• Theater
• Zoology
• All Term Papers

In Engineering And More Specifically Thermodynamics There Are A Number Of Significant Devices. This Paper Will Discuss Two Of T

In engineering and more specifically thermodynamics there are a number of significant devices. This paper will discuss two of these devices: turbines and compressors. These two devices are related in the fact that they have opposing functions. A compressor uses energy to increase the pressure of a gas, whereas a turbine uses a fluid to produce energy. Also, in this paper a particular type of turbine, the steam turbine, will be discussed in-depth.
Compressors
As mentioned before, the main function of a compressor is to intake a certain gas at one pressure and output the substance at a higher pressure. The way in which the compressor increases the pressure is by decreasing the specific volume of the inlet gas. There are some characteristics that help to separate the different types of compressors. The compressor’s displacement is the volume displaced by the compressing element per unit time and the measurement is usually expressed in cubic feet per minute. Another characteristic is the compressor capacity, which is the actual quantity of fluid that is compressed and delivered in the process, also expressed in cubic feet per minute.
A calculated value for compressors is the compression efficiency. The value is compared against two different theoretical values, the isothermal and the adiabatic. If the compressor were theoretically isothermal, then it would maintain perfect cooling where the gas remains at the inlet temperature. If the compressor is theoretically adiabatic, then no cooling occurs and the temperature of the gas rises steadily during the compression. Also, in the adiabatic case, the desired higher pressure is attained sooner than in the isothermal case but more work is required in the adiabatic process.
    There are three main types of compressors: axial flow, reciprocating, and centrifugal. In the axial flow model, the gas moves parallel to the rotor and uses moving blades to increase the pressure of the fluid. In reciprocating, the gas is compressed by a reciprocating piston in a cylinder equipped with inlet and outlet valves. Finally in the centrifugal model, a wheel an diffuser is used to speed up the gas in the wheel and slow it down in the diffuser while increasing the pressure. Figures 1-1 and 1-2 show examples of a centrifugal and reciprocating compressors.
   

Turbines
A turbine on the other hand is basically the opposite of a compressor. Instead of requiring energy as in the compressor to work upon a gas, the turbine usi

Read the rest of the term paper