Pressurized gas engine

Abstract

A pressure gas engine in which pressurized gas such as air is supplied to a series of arcuately arranged nozzles for exhausting into a series of arcuately arranged impulse buckets thereby causing rotation of a rotor in which the buckets are located, each nozzle having an exit adjacent the buckets and each bucket having a curved surface with an entering boundary edge and a leaving boundary edge for the gas blast leaving the bucket so that the blast sweeps across the curved surface of each bucket. The exit diameter of each nozzle is less than the radius of the curved surface of each bucket to achieve a full sweep of each bucket's curved surface from the entering edge to the leaving edge. The disclosure also includes means providing a pressurized gas supply passage to the nozzles, a control valve in this passage comprising a valve seat and a movable valve movable toward and away from the seat to control the gas flow through the passage to the nozzles, a gas bleed passage that diverts a portion of the pressurized gas from the supply passage to the back side of the valve opposite the seat to provide valve closing back pressure on the valve and through a bleed vent valve comprising a vent valve seat in the bleed passage and a movable vent valve member movable into and away from engagement with the vent valve seat to control this back pressure on the air supply control valve and centrifugally responsive means rotatable with the rotor of the engine for moving the vent valve member toward its seat on increasing speeds of the rotor thereby increasing and decreasing the pressure on the movable control valve to control the gas supply to the nozzles.