A large section will flow air into the combustion area, flowing outwards as to being bouyant, then water seeps in and out of the contraption due to gravity and the fact it is denser than the air. As for lighting it, as I explained you have to separate the area in which the smelting happens with an insulation layer of sort to stop water pulling out the heat. The idea seems absurd and tricky to guess, but so does the steam engine.
Assuming you mean that notch at the side where the air comes from, the water pressure would have to fight hard against gravity to just fly into that nook. (I really don’t want this convo to go back and forth btw, so if you reply i’ll wait till someone else does)
I was refering to the opening in the lower-left corner where the water is supposed to flow out from. If the surrounding pressure is too high, then the water in the flowing chamber will rise until it ends up overflowing into the combustion chamber. Furthermore, this bubble system would also need a lot of air going in, as early smelters tend to take a while
I think that method for metal working is best and could start be proto-advanced technologies, but combining metals into alloys will become a struggle. Also burgeon, I think you can just have an organism that soaks up all available water, but leaves the air to pass through it maybe by a spurting funnel?
You could have such an organism, but it is likely that such an organism wouldn’t be available or usable. And if you could use it, it would have all the problems with cooling that an artifical seal would have
Well it turns out the depth of which you live may support my idea. Air through chemical combustion can reach 5-100 atm of pressure. As long as you stay near shallow water within a kilometer from the surface the pressure would be enough to overcome that of water (pressures here are about 100 atmospheres). After this you can use this methods as to make metal parts for pumps and fans to force the water out. This will allow for colonies into deeper territories.
Are you sure that the 5-100atm figure is correct? I couldn’t find any sources that say that combustion only causes pressure to increase thermally, which should be around 4.5x the start pressure for an early smelter if my calculations were correct
It says more mechanical energy is produced, not that enough mechanical energy is made to sustain those pressures. And even if it did sustain the pressure, it would still need to start off at that pressure, which means the creatures would still need the ludicrous amounts of power to cause such pressure
Re-reading this I think an instance furnace that combust really quickly with something really heat inducing and contiuning like thermite or any other chemical explosion would be enough. From there you can start to smelt really weak metals and invest in electricity to get turbines to drive water away and spread airflow.
Actually it could definetly be thermite. Thermite requires a fair mix of aluminum powder and iron oxide powder shoken up and thats about it. Water is abundent in metal resources. Some of these metals seem to rest into crusty plates along the rocks, coral, and sand, which can easily be broken up into powders and the mixed. We all know thermite can still start a fire underwater and melts loads of things instantly. So an instant limited use furnace is definetly possible. It would be messy, so while the thermite is burning you might drop a second weighted mold over your metals, or just pound on the hot metal continuously though you would need to be fast since water would take away heat quick. Thermite is extremly hot on combustion though, so potentially it may give enough time to black Smith some low melting point metals.
Well you see, I figured that because of the abundance in metals underwater, and the common occurance of aluminium in the crust, there would be slates of it forming in the water. Aluminium also corrodes gradually underwater forming a protective white rust of zinc over itself. I initially thought harvesting it for short term use would be feasible, but I’m going to do more research on that.
