Engineer E. Béchard, known for the famous automatic fire extinguishers, studied free piston engines. In 1924, he presented a water-cooled, four-stroke, two-cylinder engine at the Paris Air Show.  This engine gave 36 CV at 1500 rpm.

"Béchard 36 CV"

-In 1926, Béchard showed a steam project of the rapid boiler type and that could use any kind of fuel and its power did not decrease with the altitude.

"Béchard idle"

"Béchard, at starting point"

"Vaporization begins"

"Béchard at full speed"

-At the rear -to the right- we see a turbine and some nozzles that are directed to it, coming from the rapid boiler.

-Its materialization is not known and it seems that it only remained an idea. This information appears in an article of the French magazine: "Les Ailes".

-From appendix 6: More information about the steam turbine prototype mentioned above.

-Water enters the shaft center where there is a check valve. The "boiler" is lentil shaped and some burners around  it  at the rear generate steam, which is led into a turbine.

"Béchard prototype"

-Steam generation is instantaneous, as reads his project. All kinds of gaseous, solid and liquid fuel can be used. More or less refined, from gasoline to even mazut fuel oils.

"Béchard steam diagram"

-The speed can be controlled by the burners or water flow.

From appendix 9: We obtained new information that completes the Béchard steam project.

"Idle rapid boiler"

-In this Figure, the burners begin to heat the water that is in the three discs, starting from the left. In the following illustration we see that it begins to boil, and is rapidly evaporating on the central disc.

"Running"

-In the third disc only superheated steam is produced before flowing away through ducts to injectors reaching the fixed vanes that direct it to the rotor with the convenient angle.

-We show the set of disks that makes the boiler together with the stator and the rotor, in an old photo that appeared in the French "La Science et la vie" magazine.

"Mobile part of the Béchard turbine"

-No application for propelling aircraft is known. However, there were test-bench trials demonstrating the fast boiler's effectiveness.

"Béchard's test bench"

-This turbine is mentioned in several articles about steam engines for aviation.