condenser

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun One that condenses, especially an apparatus used to condense vapor.
• noun A mirror, lens, or combination of lenses used to gather light and direct it upon an object or through a projection lens.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A device for removing from a current of gas such elements as will be caused to fall out from the gas by reducing its temperature. Tar arrd ammonia are separable in this way.
• noun One who or that which condenses.
• noun Specifically— Any device for reducing gases or vapors to liquid or solid form. The reduction is usually effected by lowering the temperature of the vapor by contact with chilled surfaces. A form of condenser common in the laboratory is shown in the figure. From the flask, A, the vapor to be condensed escapes through the tube b c, which passes through a larger condenser-tube. A stream of ice-water enters the condenser through d, and passes off through g, keeping the surface of the inner tube, b c, chilled, and the vapor entering the tube from A is condensed and drops from c as a liquid. Condensers used to concentrate vapors or gases, as steam, alcoholic vapors, fumes, volatile liquids, etc., commonly depend upon the reducing effects of a lower temperature. In them the vapor, gas, smoke, or fumes are brought into immediate contact with chilled surfaces. This is accomplished in a great variety of ways, as in the surface condenser of the steam-engine, the worm of a still, or the long convoluted tubes in which poisonous fumes or smoke are cooled before being allowed to escape to the chimney. The cooling surfaces are usually kept cold by water, as in the still, the gas-condenser, the sugar-condenser, etc. For fumes and smoke, the contact with walls exposed to the air is sufficient.
• noun A part of a cotton-gin which compresses the lint for convenient handling.
• noun In wool-manuf., a machine which forms the wool received from the doffer of a carding-engine or comber, and rolls it into slubbings. The doffer of the carding-engine is covered by a series of parallel strips of card-clothing, wrapped about the cylinder. The wool thus comes off in a number of loose flat ribbons of fleece, which in the condensing-machine are carried by a leather apron beneath a roller which has a reciprocating motion transverse to their direction, and thus rolls these slivers into loose slubbings, which are wound upon a roll and are ready for spinning.
• noun In the manufacture of sugar, the apparatus used for concentrating the clarified juice, preparatory to its final concentration in the vacuum or evap-orating-pan. The liquor trickles over the surface of steam-pipes, where heat evaporates the water which constitutes the greater part of the cane-juice.
• noun In optical instruments, a lens, or combination of lenses, used to gather and concentrate the rays of light collected by a mirror and direct them upon the object, as the bull's-eye condenser (see bull's-eye, 9) and the achromatic condenser used with the microscope.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun One who, or that which, condenses.
• noun An instrument for condensing air or other elastic fluids, consisting of a cylinder having a movable piston to force the air into a receiver, and a valve to prevent its escape.
• noun An instrument for concentrating electricity by the effect of induction between conducting plates separated by a nonconducting plate.
• noun A lens or mirror, usually of short focal distance, used to concentrate light upon an object.
• noun (Chem.) An apparatus for receiving and condensing the volatile products of distillation to a liquid or solid form, by cooling.
• noun (Steam Engine) An apparatus, separate from the cylinder, in which the exhaust steam is condensed by the action of cold water or air. See Illust. of Steam engine.
• noun (Optics) an achromatic lens used as a condenser.
• noun (Optics) a lens of short focal distance used for concentrating rays of light.
• noun a vessel in which steam is condensed by the direct contact of water.
• noun an apparatus for condensing steam, especially the exhaust of a steam engine, by bringing it into contact with metallic surface cooled by water or air.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A device designed to condense a gas into a liquid, either as part of a still, steam engine, refrigerator or similar machine.
• noun electronics A capacitor.
• noun optics A lens (or combination of lenses) designed to gather light and focus it onto a specimen or part of a mechanism.
• noun A dental instrument used to pack filling into a cavity in a tooth.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun an electrical device characterized by its capacity to store an electric charge
• noun lens used to concentrate light on an object
• noun a hollow coil that condenses by abstracting heat
• noun an apparatus that converts vapor into liquid