Gustaf de Laval

Karl Gustaf Patrik de Laval (1845 to 1913) was a Swedish engineer and inventor who made important contributions to the design of steam turbines and to centrifugal separation machinery for dairy. Born at Orsa in Dalarna, he took a mechanical engineering degree at the Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1866 and a doctorate at Uppsala in 1872. In 1882 he introduced the concept of an impulse steam turbine, built a small demonstration turbine in 1887, and in 1890 developed a nozzle that accelerated the steam jet to supersonic speed using the kinetic energy of the steam rather than its pressure, now known as the de Laval nozzle and used in modern rocket engines. His turbines could run at up to 30,000 rpm, which also required new reduction gearing, but the materials of the day limited their output and large electric generating plants favoured the compound turbine of Charles Parsons. To keep oil and water apart in his turbines he developed the centrifugal separator, which led to the cream separator and, with Oscar Lamm, to the company Alfa Laval in 1883. He sat in the Swedish parliament from 1888 to 1890 and was made an honorary member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1912.