Hacienda Buena Vista and the Barker Turbine

Oct 13, 2009 by Thomas

In 1833, Salvador de Vives, a Spaniard who emigrated from Venezuela to Puerto Rico, purchased an 87-acre farm in the hills north of Ponce. Hacienda Buena Vista, as it came to be known, sits in a subtropical forest near the Caños River. The hacienda soon became a major producer of coffee, as well as corn, bananas, pineapple, oranges, and cacao. Salvador’s son and grandson installed a Barker’s mill powered by a nearby 60-foot waterfall, making Hacienda Buena Vista the first farm in Latin America to generate its own electric power by means of a water mill.

This Barker turbine was built by the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, N.Y. It can produce about 6 hp at 22 rpm. This is the only known example of a functional industrial Barker hydraulic turbine, the earliest practical reaction turbine design. The mill and turbine have been restored with major support from the Smithsonian Institute, and once again powers the coffee pulper, pergamino de-huller & corn milling machines. Many turbines appear to have been melted down during the civil war, so it is possible that other Barker turbines existed at one point, but no document has surfaced so far to point towards another example.
A Barker’s mill or Scottish turbine is a hydraulic machine on the principle of what is known as the hydraulic tourniquet. Water pours down an upright vessel free to rotate about a vertical axis, and then jets from nozzles at the ends of the arms. This causes the arm-and-shaft assembly to rotate. The brass nozzles are adjustable to balance the water flow to each side.

Barker’s turbine was invented as a laboratory curiosity at the end of the 17th century. It was later improved upon, leading to the Scotch turbines widely used throughout Europe and America. The discovery of this pre- Scotch turbine in Ponce led historians on a decade-long search for its origins. The turbine follows improvements made by James Whitelaw in 1841 England and 1843 America, often treated as the first true metal turbine waterwheel. This turbine, then, is considered a “missing link” in the evolution of turbines.
Hacienda Buena Vista is located about 10mi/16.1km north of Ponce.