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French River Land Company's Website!

 

French River Land Company's Home Page!

 

FRL History

Hydrolec Disassembly

Hydrolec Rebuild

Key Personnel

Machine Shop

News Page

Previous Pictures

Projects

For Sale

HYDROELECTRIC SITES:

Anasagunticook Lake Dam Replacement-    C.Fay & W.Fay

Appleton HEP-     Jim Lichoulas

Badger Pond Dam Removal

Senor Bonifettis' sites in Chile

Buttermilk Hydro

Chittendon Falls

Claytor Dam

Collins Bascule Dam

ESAC WORKS      July 1985

Fiske Mill

1852 Fourneyron

Golden Pond Hydro

Hunts Pond

Jaffery Fire Protection

Lake May Pelton Wheel Removal

Livermore Falls

Martinsville Hydro

OSV

Silk Knitters- Ron Macleod

South Village Dam

Shaker Mill Dam

Tannery Pond

Valatie Falls

Ware River Power's Hydrostations

 

USEFUL ENGINEERING:

The Banki Water Turbine Mockmoore and Merryfield

Bishops Method- STABGM Program

Blade Design-Nechleba

Chain Turbine by: Nguyen Minh Duy

Chain Turbine Mechanics- Discussions with Duy

Design of Small Water Turbines for Farm and Small Communities

Draft Tube Design

Draft Tube Tests

Ejection into Tailraces of Hydropower Plants: S. M. Slisskii

Fall Increaser- Henry Ford

Fall Increaser Herschel Venturi Tube

Fall Increaser Moody Ejector Turbine

Fall Increaser Hydraulic Jump Apron

Flashboard Pins

Gatecase Design- Kovalev

Gatecase Design- Nechleba

Hydraulic Turbines by Arnold Pfau

Hydrostatic Beam Analysis

Impulse Turbines  by Ely Hutchinson

Kaplan Blade Design NACA Air Foil- Report No. 460

Kaplan Blade Design NACA Air Foil- Report No. 628

Kaplan Design- Kovalev

A Laboratory Study to Improve the Efficiency of Crossflow Turbines- N. Aziz & V. Desai

Meggering Generators

Meggering      Earth Resistance

Nechleba

Out Gassing

Parallel Operation of Turbines Analysis

Pelton Design- Daugherty

Pelton Design- Nechleba

Powerhouse Design- Miniwatt Hydro

Powerhouse Design- Natick Dam

Power Plant Inspection

Rake-Leonard

Rake-Newport News

Rack Design-Chicopee-Olav Hotvedt

Rack Design- PHI- Bill Fay

Rack Design-PHI-Brian French

Rack Design-PHI-Ken Smith

Rack Design-ASCE

Rack Design- Hydraulic Institue of Munich

Rack Design-Flow Induced Vibrations

Selecting Hydraulic Reaction Turbines BUREC

Stress Analysis of Hydraulic Turbine Parts, BUREC- F.O. Ruud

Some Fluid Flow Characteristics of a Cross Flow Type Hydraulic Turbine- Durgin & Fay

Tests on a Kaplan Hydraulic Turbine

Theoretical Conditions Related to an Open Channel Flow Linear Turbine- Ishida & Service

Turgo, A High Speed Impulse Turbine- Paul Wilson

Vortices at Intakes

Water Hammer-Lorenzo Allievi-Text

Water Hammer-Lorenzo Allievi-Figures

Water Hammer-ASME Symposium 1933

Water Hammer _ Norman Gibson

Water Hammer-E.B.Strowger

Water Wheel Design- Ken Smith

Weights

Wooden Penstocks

TRADE CATALOUGES:

Brook Waterwheel

Charmilles Turbines

Dayton Globe

Electric Machinery Company (EM)

English Pelton

ESAC

Essex Turbines

GE WW Vert Gen

GE Springbed Brg

Gilkes Turbines

GilkesWaterpower

Holyoke Hercules

Hunt Cat 29 A&B

Hunt cylinder

Kingsbury  Brg

Leffel Bulletin 38

Leffel Bulletin 54

Leffel Hoppes Unit

Leffel Laboratory Unit

Leffel Miscellaneous

Lombard Governor

Pelton Wheel (1909)

Pelton Wheel (1925)

Rodney Hunt

Samson PamK

Smith Power Tables

Smith Kaplan

Smith Power

Smith Pelton

Smith Develop

Smith Turbines: Bulletin 105

Swain Turbine

Tyler Turbine

Vertical Shaft Water Wheel Driven Generators- General Electric

Wellman Seaver Morgan

Westinghouse Small Vertical Waterwheel-Driven A-C Generators, July 1944

Westinghouse WW Generators

Woodward Governor

 

Links:

Swiftriverhydro.com

damengineers.com

 

1852 FOURNEYRON PAGE

    The ancestor of the modern, radial flow, turbine was invented by two French Engineers, Claude Burdin (1790-1873) a professor at the Ecole des Mines at Saint Etienne and his student, Benoit Fourneyron (1802-1867). In 1833, the Societe de Encouragement pour le Industrie National, offered a prize to any person producing a large scale, commercial hydraulic turbine. Fourneyron won the prize, for his turbine design. The turbine was licensed to others to manufacture. In 1844, Uriah A, Boyden of Chicopee, Massachusetts modified and patented improvements to the design. In 1849, he began to manufacture his turbine at the Ames Manufacturing Company on the Chicopee River.

    The earliest Boyden, Fourneyrons were installed in Lawrence, Lowell and Holyoke, Massachusetts. These are the machines that James Emerson refers to as the "Great White Elephants of the Lowell Corporation".

    I had heard of these types of machines for years and did not think any existed. We were doing routine maintenance on the Open Square's, Leffel Z machines during the annual drawdown in Holyoke. I squeezed behind the number four machine pressure case and found one of the original Boyden Fourneyron machines in a dungeon. It is interesting that ten of these machines were installed. They were decommissioned in 1888 when Holyoke Hercules, cylinder gate machines were installed in two of the pits that had two of the Boyden machines. Two more were removed in 1927 when the Leffel Z machines were installed. The remaining six machines stayed tucked under the floor boards. To the best of my knowledge, these are the only remaining Fourneyron turbines left in the U.S.

"UPDATE-I":

 

"UPDATE-II": Please see the e-mail sent to me by Mr. Tom Livoti of Cohoes, N.Y. inserted below my photographs. (October 24, 2006)"

Boyden, Fourneyron Turbine. Note outward radial flow runner at bottom (buckets just visible). The four bar linkage actuates a cylinder gate that is located between the bottom of the pressure case and the inside of the runner. The water sprays out radially and is directed into the tailrace by a circular, brick wall.

Boyden, Fourneyron runner. Note the runner consists of a large disc attached to the bottom of the turbine shaft. The blades are attached to the edge of the disc similar to a vertical cross flow runner. The rectangular bronze pieces are the blades. The vertical control rods are attached to a cylinder gate that is located between the inside of the runner and the pressure case. As the rods are raised, the cylinder is lifted and the high pressure water is directed radially through the blades.

A view of a second machine's runner.

A view of the curved, brick, discharge wall that directs the flow into the tailrace.

Another machine with a good view of the radial outflow, external runner.

Here, my business partner, Ken Smith, is inspecting the 33 inch, Leffel "Z", the reason we were at Open Square. In 1993, my other partner, Davis Hobbs and I installed new wicket gates cast from a zinc alloy, ZA 12. 12 years later, there is no corrosion and no fouling. These gates look like we installed them yesterday.

*********UPDATE*********

Between 1871 and 1873 these two Boyden Turbines were installed at the Harmony Mill Number 3 in Cohoes, New York.  Harmony Mills was the largest They were used to power the mills machinery via belts.  These two turbines are installed in the south end of the mill building.  The water was supplied from a dam on the Mohawk River to a power canal that fed the water in from the west side of the building.  The water was then channeled to other mills where it drove an additional three turbines.  The water flowed back into the Mohawk River after powering the turbines.

 
These turbines produced 800 HP each based on a 102 inch diameter runner.  These photos show the only remaining Boyden Turbines in Cohoes, New York.  These photos are from October 19, 2006.
 
Mill Number 3 has been restored to Loft Apartments.
 
Thanks,
Tom Livoti

 

 

Send mail to: cfay@frenchriverland.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: 07/25/08