The Montgolfier Ram

I saw the remains of one on TV in the UK....an Adam Hart Davis program the valve was a big steel ball like a cannon ball, as the water speed increased it pushed the ball up a slightly inclined pipe until it blocked the exit hole and created the ram effect.

It was up in the lake district I think.

this may all be meaningless to you, as WE DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE !

Can't members at least give a country or continent!!!???

Harwich for the Continent. Frinton for the incontinent...

PWAY slack.

Brings back memories of my railway days, both as a footlpate man and a power signal lineman. speed rstrictions had to be strictly enforced. or you might take a trip to Derby.

GF

Del

Im situated in florida usa. There is a tidal curent near here of 20 plus knots. called the gulf stream, I wondered if it might be usefull as an ever lasting form of energy?

GF

If you extract too much kinetic energy from that you will screw up the climate of the British Isles!!!! That current ends up over here as the 'North Atlantic Drift' Often wrongly still called the 'Gulf Stream' .

It would get even colder here!

Im an ex pat from ESSEX Hornchurch and Colchester . So you should be glad about my efforts to slow down global warming in your area. most of your cold weather comes straight off the north sea, mixes with the north atlantic drift and presipitates heavilly on Essex. However, laying a few big concrete tubes on the sea floor up the eastern seaboard shouldnt effect any body much, might be classified as hollow reefs, good for the fish.

GF

"Does any one know of the largest water ram ever built? or anything about the type of waste valves employed?" NO.

But "Ragged Chutes" was a very large air compressor that made a spectacular display when the "relief valve" released.

Ragged Chutes Air Compressor

Hey, great link..V interesting.

Today we'd probably use loads of complex machinery to achieve the same, truly great engineering!

Del

"Today we'd probably use loads of complex machinery to achieve the same, truly great engineering!"

IIRC it was a natural formation in the rocks and the mining interests adapted it to supply compressed air for the mine. Two similar ones world wide, one in India.

Enginners from india would be happy to know the location of one of the two facilities of the unusual and ingenious device to get compressed air from water movement.

A friend in Calcutta told me of the one in India. Like Ragged Chutes IIRC it is now defunct also. Natural formations eventually wear out too.

According to:

D.F Maratos, Department of Aero and Mechanical Engineering, University of Salford, Newton Building, The Crescent

As of April 15, 2002

Krol, (1947) [5] (p. 41)... "What is probably the largest installation of it's kind in existence consists of four twelve inch diameter rams supplying water to the town of Agua de Dios, Columbia..."

www.desline.com/articoli/4932.pdf

i visited desline.com/articoli/4932.pdf - i get the message - nessun sito web configurato per questo indinizzo. will somebody tell me what it means? i would be too eager to know about the isntallation in the town of Agua de Dios - perhaps one of the earliest cdm project - clean development mechanism to avoid carbon emission and global warming