Flash boiler
Water-tube boiler
A flash boiler is a type of water-tube boiler. The tubes are close together and water is pumped through them. A flash boiler differs from the type of monotube steam generator in which the tube is permanently filled with water. In a flash boiler, the tube is
kept so hot that the water feed is quickly flashed into steam and superheated. Flash boilers had some use in automobiles in the 19th century and this use continued into the early 20th century.
History
There is disagreement about the exact definition of a flash boiler. Some writers use the term interchangeably with monotube boiler and there is even use of the term semi-flash boiler. However, the flash boiler is generally attributed to Léon Serpollet who used a flash boiler in the Gardner-Serpollet steam-powered car from 1896. Serpollet's boiler was a low-water-content type with thick-walled tubes to provide a store of heat. Serpollet patented a steam generator in 1888, US Patent 379,421, but this is an early version which differs from the one illustrated above.
“Flash boiler” enters the record as water-tube boiler. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Flash, boiler and Water-tube can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Flash boiler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.