Novice Steam Engine (Part-2)

Looking at the huge machine slowly bob up and down, Alexander then began to ask Marvin some technical questions about it, such as its output and efficiency.

"So much coal does it use every day? And how many ingots can you turn into sheet iron?" Alexander inquired.

"Umm…. my lord we use close to 200 kg of coal during the day and can process a few hundred ingots." With the help of the supervisor there, Marvin was able to state the numbers.

And using this Alexander was able to roughly work out the amount of work done.

He did this by knowing that burning 1 kg of coal produced 30 MJ of energy and that the hammer the engine was driving weighed 50 kg and moved a few meters up and down around 10 times a minute.

All this got him a grand total of 1 horsepower, at an efficiency of less than 1%!

It would have been much easier and cheaper to hire a couple of men to manually beat the iron into sheets than going through so much trouble.