Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/833

.] &quot;bowls &quot;of the squeezer to extract superfluous moisture. These bowls are thick cylinders of wood, usually in this case made of beech. From the lime squeezer the cloth is carried over winches, and guided through pot-eyes into the kiers. FIG. 6. Section of Lime Squeezer.

Bowking.—A bowking kier is an apparatus in which the cloth is boiled. To one old form of kier allusion has already been made. Bowking is now mostly accomplished in closed kiers worked up to a considerable pressure of steam. In the boiling for white bleaching about 80 fi&amp;gt; of lime are required for 2700 lb of cloth, and the boiling is continued for ten hours at a pressure of about 30 Bb. A form of kier very generally employed consists of a strong- vessel made of boiler plate, with a man-hole in the upper part, which can be screwed tightly down. The vessel is about 10 feet in depth, and 5 or 6 feet in diameter, and has a false bottom made of a gird of wood or iron, on which the lowest layer of cloth rests. Up the centre of the kier passes a pipe or tube which reaches higher than the cloth can be piled, and is surmounted by an umbrella-shaped plate. Steam is admitted at the lower part of the kier, and as the pressure accumulates it gradually forces the liquor upwards through the central pipe till, by-and-by, it is dashed with great violence against the umbrella-shaped plate, and thrown over the upper surface of the cloth. It gradually percolates down through the cloth to the bottom, where it is again caught and forced up through the central pipe, and thus a constant circulation is maintained. A very efficient circulating kier, the invention of Mr Taylor of Berchvale, has recently been introduced, of which a sectional representation is given in fig. 7. This kier in outline is like the previous, but it has no central distribut ing pipe. Instead, the liquor is carried by an external pipe to the top of the kier, where it enters and is forcibly thrown against the surface of the cloth. The kier A has a false bottom B as in the previous case, and when filled with cloth and liquor, the liquor percolates by a pipe C into the receiver D, where it finds its own level in the ascending pipe E. Steam is admitted at the lower part of the receiver by the steam-pipe F, and forces the liquor upwards through the pipe E to the top of the kier. The vacuum created in the receiver is supplied from the lower part of the kier, and the flow is facilitated by the pressure of steam from above, and thus a constant steady circulation is maintained. This kier is very useful in cases where a comparatively low pressure is desirable, as in white bleaching, where the coloured headings of the cloth (Turkey red or other coloured threads introduced at the end of a web) have to be preserved. FIG. 7. Taylor s Circulating Keir. The bowking apparatus generally used by printers is Barlow s high-pressure kiers, an arrangement in which the kiers are worked in pairs. A pair is shown in fig. 8, one being seen in section ; the dimensions of the vessels are inserted in the figure. FIG. 8. Bnrlow s High-Pressure Keirs.

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