CONDENSER ( from Lat. eondensare, to thicken, from corn-, together + dens-us. thick. Gk. Sattiis, dasys, thick). Any device for reducing gas or vapor to a liquid or solid form is termed a condenser, though the name is applied specific ally to a variety of apparatus used in the arts besides appliances for condensing gases and vapors, as the part of a cotton-gin which com presses the lint; a machine which takes the wool coming from the carding engine and rolls it into slightly twisted threads or slubbings ready for spinning; the arrangement of steam pipes used in sugar-mills to evaporate the water in the cane-juice preparatory to concentration. Condensers in steam engineering are apparatus for condensing the exhaust steam from an engine. They are employed on shipboard, invariably in ocean steamers, and very generally in fresh-water craft, but are seldom used on stationary land engines and almost never on locomotive or port able engines. The two forms of steam-condensers are the jet condenser, now seldom used, and the surface condenser. The jet condenser consists
essentially of an air-tight chamber into which the exhaust steam flows, and is brought into con tact with a spray of water whose action is to turn the steam to water, which falls to the bot tom of the chamber and is pumped away by an air-pump. With the jet condenser the condensed steam is necessarily mixed with the water of the spray, which in ocean strainers is always sea water, so that it is always salt and thus objec tionable for boiler-feeding purposes. To remedy this objection, the surface condenser was invent ed, and consists essentially of a vessel containing brass tubes through which the exhaust steam is passed, and around which a current of cold water is kept in circulation, thus keeping separate the condensed steam and the salt condensing water. See STEAM-ENGINE.