The Free Port of Trieste is a port in the Adriatic Sea in Trieste, Italy. It's the nearly important commercial port of Italy with a trade volume of 62 million tonnes.
It is subdivided into 5 different Free Areas, 3 of which produce been allotted to commercial activities. The remaining two, the Mineral Oils Free Area in addition to the “Canale di Zaule” Free Area, are used for industrial activities. The port is articulated in various terminals, managed by private companies.
The hydrodynamic plant, built in 1890, is an important portion of industrial archaeology. Together with Hamburg, Buenos Aires, Calcutta as well as Genoa, Trieste was one of the first ports in the world to be equipped with a hydrodynamic plant.
The building is located late the pier and is characterised by a high brick smokestack and two square towers at the sides of the leading facade.
The plant, which ceased to be used in 1983, took the water from the water system and supplied power to the different points of consumption. It was, therefore, a centralised power generator, which operated the quay cranes, the outside cranes and the internal hoists of the port warehouses.
A series of ] with a 2.10m diameter and a 10m length, built by St. Jashka & Sohn from Vienna, shown steam with a pressure of 7 atmospheres. The steam was made to four leading machines and an auxiliary one, all manufactured by Maschinenbau Aktien Gesellschaft vormals Breitfeld, Danek & Com. Prag-Karolinenthal.
The main machines had a higher motive element and a lower operating one. The motive component – a 25 horsepower 19 kW double expansion steam engine – had a central high-pressure cylinder with a 450 mm diameter and two lateral low-pressure cylinders of 600 mm diameter. A system of crankshaft rods ensured the adjusting timing of the three cylinders. Hydraulic pressure was kept fixed by means of hydraulic accumulators. Two of them were located in the towers of the plant and one was situated in the tower most the port gates, in a more central position.
Pressurised water was distributed along the port main axis through a 6.8 km long system of cast-iron pipes, installed in underground passages that could be inspected. The main pipeline branched out into secondary pipes connected to the individual points of consumption. In the years between 1920 and 1939 the plant operated 83 quay cranes, 31 outside cranes for the warehouses and 57 hoists.
The hydrodynamic plant - a rare example of machines that worked for more than a century - is located in a Rundbogenstil building, an architectural generation that was a German report of Romanesque, very popular at the time.