jgourlay
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Registered: 9-7-2008
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Head scratching about liquid air production
I was reading about production of liquid air back in the 1870's, and it's a bit of a head scratcher.
I understand the schematic process: compress air, let it cool to ambient, expand it in a nozzle with a heat exchanger wrapped around it, and you get
colder air with a lower volume. Rinse, repeat.
But I'm thinking about the 1870's: no "vacuum flasks", no high speed/high efficiency multi-stage turbines, etc. How did Guy Lassac et. al. do this?
Put another way: how did they keep thermal energy from getting back into the now-smaller-volume of gas faster than the compression/expansion could
complete?
I saw the patent drawing from 'way back'. It looks like a single two piston pump attached to a series/parallel arrangement of spiral counterflow heat
exchangers and nozzles.
So, was this a "continuous flow" hot air in one end, cold liquid air out the other kind of arrangement?
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Endimion17
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Guy Lassac? You mean Gay-Lussac?
No, he didn't liquefy air. He died in 1850., some 25 years before Carl von Linde managed to liquefy air in his regenerative cooling machine.
Actually, the name "Linde" and "Linde machine" are almost synonims for liquid air. Not Gay-Lussac.
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