This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Ships, a project to improve all Ship-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other articles, please join the project, or contribute to the project discussion. All interested editors are welcome. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.ShipsWikipedia:WikiProject ShipsTemplate:WikiProject ShipsShips articles
The article states that the internal coil is heated by steam from the main boiler. This makes sense but, until reading this, I was under the impression that it was filled with superheated water at boiler pressure. Are there two different designs or was my previous information incorrect? Using steam does seem to me to be a waste of steam. --Roly (talk) 08:08, 15 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It's connected by a valve to the steam manifold and has an exhaust (either over the side or up the chimney). As this valve inevitably throttles it, then it's at slightly lower pressure.
It's not part of the boiler circulating circuit. That would make it part of the testable boiler system and would also require the kettle's water level to be monitored, to avoid it boiling dry. It would also be difficult to arrange circulation through it.
It's not a big problem to use some steam, there's a boiler full of it. Steam is cheap - far cheaper than superheated water (by volume, as steam is of low density). Andy Dingley (talk) 09:20, 15 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Andy; I was obviously misinformed.
There must be some throttling at the outlet of the coil, otherwise the steam temperature would instantly drop to 100C inside the coil and could never boil the water in the kettle.
BTW, the superheated water would be recirculated, not lost. The steam is obviously lost; hopefully, not much though. --Roly (talk) 10:36, 15 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
