Saturday, May 31, 2008

Bubble washing of biodiesel

Bubble washing - The bubble washing technique was developed at the University of Idaho and is the most economical way of washing biodiesel after processing. The pumps use only a few watts of electricity (your mixing motor may use 250 to 300 watts) and you need only use 50 to 75% ratio of water to biodiesel to wash, as opposed to three or four times the volume of water in the more usual mixing wash method.

You will need various items from an aquarium shop - they are not expensive and you can tailor the size to match the size of your washing tank. You will need a pump - some of them come complete with a filter, which can be used for something else. They all have a mains power cable and air line. Few have switches incorporated, as they are designed for continuous running - a plus point. They are quiet - another plus point - but they do vibrate with a low hum - 50 or 60 cycles per second, depending on your supply. You will also need an air stone. The small ones are the best, as they form many small bubbles, but some of the plastic inlet tubes (especially blue ones, for some reason) tend to be melted by the biodiesel. Some are about six inches long, with clear plastic inlets. You may choose to run with a bigger pump and two stones, using a T piece in the air line - the more bubbles the better. All you do is plug in and leave running for two to three days, checking the pH of the biodiesel periodically. Ideally, it should end up about 7.5 - neutral

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Biodiesel Production Day




OK, this is part 3 of my video series on producing biodiesel at home. The photo is a sample of the finished, but unfiltered and unwashed, product of the batch shown in the video. It could be filtered and used as-is, and lots of home biodiesel producers do just that. It still contains a small amount of methanol, which isn't gonna hurt anything, and traces of soaps (transesterification and saponification are the same process), which probably won't either. However, I prefer to wash it.
This is my third batch, ever. I started with a small, one liter test batch, then made a 10 liter batch for simplicity of measurement(because 10 liters requires exactly 2 liters of methanol), and finally made this 3 gallon batch for filming purposes and because I needed some fuel! I have enough oil to make more, but I only had enough methanol left of the 1 gallon I initially bought, to make 3 gallons. So it's time to buy more methanol.
I need to build a larger and more permanent setup now, too. The aluminum stock pot I used is less than desirable, for a couple of reasons. First, it doesn't hold enough. It is time to start producing at least 20 gallon batches, and to do that I will need a much larger pot. Second, in the video, see that methoxide running down the side of the pot as I pour it into the oil? Know what that does? Well, the methoxide is a strong base, so it cleans the aluminum. Extremely well. So well in fact that it erodes the aluminum, producing hydrogen gas in the process. Not exactly a good thing.
So I'm thinking of using a 55 gallon drum with the bottom cut out, turned upside down so I can thread a pipe nipple into a bung hole, and a ball valve into that.
The next challenge will then be to develop a good, safe way to mix the methoxide. A glass container is best. I've seen some people using plastic, but I think the methoxide attacks the plastic after awhile. You've seen the setup I'm using for small batches, and it's sub-marginal. Will steel work? I'll have to research that. I'm pretty sure galvanized steel wouldn't, because the methoxide would attack the zinc plating. But bare steel, maybe. That would be good, because 5 gallon steel cans are common and cheap. Otherwise, multiple 1 gallon glass jugs will have to be used. I know 6.5 gallon glass carboys can be had, but they are expensive and in demand, plus it would be a really bad thing to break one of those, full of methoxide! Either way, I think I am going to try to build a shaker table to mix it, so I can just turn it on and let it do its thing, while I do mine. Or, I could use a pump like the commercial rigs do. Perhaps that is the way to go.
The last thing I need to address is the washing process. It's pretty tedious to do without losing some of the product to soap production, which happens if you try to do it too fast. I don't think that part will be a problem, though. I will probably just build a permanent structure out of wood 2x4s on top of the 55 gallon drum, and use that to support both the mixer and a water misting head for washing.
Of course, whatever I do will be reported right here. You can make sure you don't miss it by signing up for the Biofuels update list. Just enter your email address here:

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Locked vs. Unlocked Cell Phone

Kitty vs. Raccoon

DIY long-range cell antenna


I have written in the past about cell phones for the wanderer, and during my research of the subject I ran across an article about how to build a directional Yagi antenna for cell phone use in areas with poor service.
I recently found that article again, so this time I'm going to post a link to it.
Here it is.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Woodstoves

The following is an excerpt from an interesting site I found:

"Our home has a large permanent brick chimney that serves our two wood heating/ cooking stoves is quite another matter. For the past thirty years, we have lived in this 90+ year-old, 9 meter (30 ft) one-story square wood frame structure, with an unlined brick chimney rising up from its center to about a meter above the peak of a steep pyramid roof. We blocked off the old fireplace at the base of the chimney and connected above it the flue of a 1922 "Home Comfort" woodburning kitchen cook stove, and in the living room, the flue of a cast iron, space heating box stove. The 6" diameter flue pipe of each stove runs about four feet vertically, and six feet horizontally, to connect to the brick chimney.

During the winter, we run both stoves at full draft to minimize smoke and creosote build-up. No banking the fire at night means re-loading every four to five hours in very cold weather. We take down the stove pipes once a year for cleaning, removing from each about two pounds of hard, brittle, glassy-- to soft fluffy tar/ creosote. The brick chimney itself gathers hard creosote layers that are very difficult to remove, as the roof is too steep to climb, and I can reach only a little way up into it with scrapers from below.

During our thirty-year stay here, we have experienced five or six flue fires-- very scary, very dangerous. Usually, they happen in the middle of the night when we are awakened by a strange palpable roar and the crackle of over-heated stovepipe. If it has advanced far enough, we can see the landscape near our house illuminated by an eerie orange glow from the blowtorch of flame extending several feet above the chimney. Our flue fires always start from a very hot stove, work their way up and along the stove pipe, and into the chimney. With luck, we can stop the progress of the burn before it reaches the chimney by shutting off all air and by cooling the stove pipe with water. If we can't stop it, a full-fledged chimney fire takes over. If we can't put it out, at least we can slow it down. Over the years, fires have eroded the mortar between the chimney bricks. Before we re-grouted the bricks, we could see the orange glow of the raging fire inside the chimney through open cracks between the bricks. We keep a garden hose ready at all times, to keep the roof from catching fire. I also have a chemical torch that is supposed to lessen the ferocity, but have not used it yet. A full flue fire does completely clean out the chimney, so its not all bad, unless it also cleans out the house.

So why the heck don't we fix it? Tear the chimney out and build it right? It would cost less to let the house burn and buy a trailer. Abandoned for over twenty years, "this old house" has feasted colonies of termites, the foundation has hosted lush gardens of moldy dry rot, the ceilings have suffered from leaky roofs, and floors were never level or square. It is a few years older than we are, and it need last only a few years more. The important things-- the family, the forest, and the land-- will still be when we and the house are gone."

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Friday, May 16, 2008

Plowing with a John Deere A



This is an unstyled A, made from 1935-38 when the "styled" version with the familiar slotted grille took over. If you look at the hood, you see a red fuel cap at the very back, then a green one further along the hood. That denotes a distillate/kerosene fueled tractor. The red cap is for a small tank holding gasoline for starting; once the engine is warm, one switches over to "tractor fuel" as it was called then, in the main tank. The distillate tractor had the same engine as the gasoline tractor, except lower compression ratio and a preheated (by the engine coolant) intake manifold. This is what retiredtractors.com has to say about the subject:

"Tractor fuel (or distillate) was similar to kerosene, but derived from petroleum (kerosene is often derived from coal). Think of paint thinner - it says on the label "Contains petroleum distillates". The engine needed to be really hot in order to vaporize that stuff. You couldn't start up the tractor with it. That is why there is a small gasoline tank on an "All Fuel" tractor. Once you got the engine started and warmed up, you switched a valve to the distillate tank. It wouldn't develop as much power as gasoline; but at the time, during the thirties and early forties, it was much, much cheaper than gasoline. THAT was the advantage! When gasoline became as cheap as tractor fuel, the all-fuel engines were discontinued. When that happened, the engine compression was increased in order to get more horsepower (the full potential of the gasoline).
Now, we ALL run them on gasoline! The engine needs to be really HOT to work well with the "heavier" fuels. It needs to be "WORKING" to get that hot. When we use the tractors for putt-putting around, it is difficult to keep the engine temperature up high enough. Don't worry, your two cylinder tractor, no matter how OLD it is, does NOT require special fuel. As is, the engine will run beautifully on gasoline. You just won't get any horsepower advantage over the tractor fuel, because of the low compression engine. Just buy "regular" gas. You don't need any "octane" because the engine compression is low. Your tractor will never "ping"."

I've often wondered if these tractors will run on straight biodiesel. I'll bet they would. Or maybe even plain filtered WVO, mixed with some proportion of gasoline.

I love these old tractors for their simplicity. Hand start, no battery necessary. No water pump or thermostat; they relied on thermosiphon coolant flow, and a lever controlled air shutters in the grille to regulate temperature. Antifreeze wasn't generally used either, the water was simply drained into a waiting pail at the end of the day's work if a freeze was expected.


Here's another video of a 2-cylinder John Deere, this one a styled G. This is a good demonstration of just how well these old tractors can pull. Notice that even when he throttled it back to probably about 300 rpm, it was still pulling; it just didn't have enough weight to hold the frontend down. It's a balancing act between frontend weight to keep the front down and weight on the rear wheels for traction, without going over the allowed weight for the pulling class.
For those who don't know, that sled the tractor is pulling has a large weight which slides forward over a skid on the ground as the tractor progresses down the track, adding more and more resistance to forward motion. I like watching it, because it gives those old tractors a real workout and demonstrates what they can do.

Tractor power



This is still a good way to power stuff. My 1955 Allis WD-45 diesel tractor has a belt pulley, but it doesn't sound as neat as this old John Deere A.

Cleaning the points on a Briggs & Stratton



I've had to do this a time or three.

Redneck chainsaw sharpener



Looks like it would work. I just use a file, but this may save some time.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Ecuador

Amazon blowgun



I believe they use strychnine as the poison on the darts. I've had a very good book for decades, called "A Sporting Chance" by Daniel P. Mannix (I think that's right; now I'll go to Amazon.com and see if I can find it) that has a chapter on blowguns, as well as chapters on all kinds of other strange and cool forms of hunting. Including, of all things, flying frogs that catch birds for you.

I was right! Here it is:

It's a very good book, as I said. I'm pretty sure it's out of print, but they have it.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Hot Bulb, Hot Tube and Diesel Engines


Starting a Hot-Bulb Engine

Hot bulb engine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The hotbulb, or hot bulb engine or vaporizing oil engine is a type of internal combustion engine. It is a surface ignition engine in which the superheated fuel is ignited by being brought into contact with oxygen-rich fresh air, rather than by a separate source of ignition, such as a spark plug.

It was perfected by Herbert Akroyd Stuart in the end of the 19th century. The first prototypes were built in 1886 and production started in 1891 by Richard Hornsby & Sons of Grantham, Lincolnshire, England under the title Hornsby Akroyd Patent Oil Engine under license. It was later developed in the USA by the German emigrants Mietz and Weiss by combining it with the two-stroke engine developed by Joseph Day. Similar engines, for agricultural and marine use, were built by Bolinder in Sweden. Bolinder is now part of the Volvo group.

Akroyd-Stuart's vaporizing oil engine (compared to spark-ignition) is distinctly different from Rudolf Diesel's better-known engine where ignition is initiated through the heat of compression. An oil engine will have a compression ratio of about 3:1, where a typical Diesel engine will have a compression ratio ranging between 15:1 to 20:1.

The engines were usually one cylinder, four-stroke units, although following Mietz & Weiss' developments in the USA, 2-stroke versions were constructed.

The hot-bulb engine shares its basic layout with nearly all other internal combustion engines, in that it has a piston inside a cylinder connected to a flywheel via a connecting rod and crankshaft. The flow of gases through the engine is controlled by valves. The majority operate on the standard 4-stroke cycle of an Induction Stroke, a Compression Stroke, a Power Stroke and an Exhaust Stroke.

The main feature of the hot-bulb engine is the vaporizer or hot-bulb, a chamber usually cast into the engine block and attached to the main cylinder by a narrow opening. Prior to starting the engine from cold, this vaporizer is heated externally by a blow-lamp or slow-burning wick (on later models sometimes electric heating or pyrotechnics was used) for as much as half an hour. The engine is then turned over, usually by hand but sometimes by compressed air or an electric motor.

Air is drawn into the cylinder through the intake valve as the piston descends (The Induction Stroke). During the same stroke, fuel is sprayed into the hot-bulb by a mechanical jerk-pump through a nozzle. Through the action of the sprayer and the heat of the hot-bulb, the fuel instantly vaporises. The air in the cylinder is then forced through the top of the cylinder as the piston rises (The Compression Stroke), through the opening into the hot-bulb, where it is compressed and therefore its temperature rises. The vaporised fuel mixes with the compressed air and ignites due to the heat of the compressed air and the heat applied to the hot-bulb prior to starting. The resulting pressure drives the piston down (The Power Stroke). The piston's action is converted to a rotary motion by the crankshaft-flywheel assembly, to which equipment can be attached for work to be performed. The flywheel stores momentum, some of which is used to turn the engine over during the three strokes when power is not being produced. The piston rises again and the exhaust gases are expelled through the exhaust valve (The Exhaust Stroke). The cycle then starts again.

Once the engine is running, the heat of compression and ignition maintains the hot-bulb at the necessary temperature and the blow-lamp or other heat source can be removed. From this point the engine requires no external heat and requires only a supply of air, fuel oil and lubricating oil to run. The fact that the engine could be left unattended for long periods whilst running made hot bulb engines popular choices for powering generators and pumps.

Advantages

At the time the hot-bulb engine was invented, its great attractions were its economy, simplicity, and ease of operation in comparison to the steam engine, then the dominant source of power in industry. Steam engines achieved an average thermal efficiency (the percent of heat generated that is actually turned into useful work) of around 6%. Hot-bulb engines could easily achieve 12% thermal efficiency.

The hot-bulb engine is much simpler to construct and operate than the steam engine. Boilers require at least one person to add water and fuel as needed and monitor pressure to prevent overpressure and a resulting explosion. If fitted with automatic lubrication systems and a governor to control the fuel supply, a hot-bulb engine could be left running, unattended for hours at a time.

Another attraction was their safety. A steam engine, with its exposed fire and hot boiler, steam pipes and working cylinder could not be used in flammable conditions such as munitions factories or fuel refineries. Hot-bulb engines also produced cleaner exhaust fumes. A big danger with the steam engine was that if the boiler pressure grew too high and the safety valve failed, a highly dangerous explosion could occur (although this was a relatively rare occurrence by the time the hot-bulb engine was invented). A more common problem was that if the water level in the boiler of a steam engine was allowed to drop too low, the internal structure of the boiler could collapse or melt, also causing dangerous release of high pressure gas. If a hot bulb engine ran out of fuel, it would simply stop. The cooling water was usually a closed circuit, so no water loss would occur unless there was a leak. If the cooling water ran low, the engine would seize through overheating- a major problem, but it carried no danger of explosion.

Compared to both steam and gasoline (petrol) engines, hot-bulb engines are simpler and therefore have less potential problems. There is no electrical system as found on a gasoline engine, and no external boiler and steam system as on a steam engine.

A big attraction with the hot-bulb engine was its ability to run on a wide range of fuels. Even poor-burning fuels could be used since a combination of vaporizer- and compression-ignition meant that such fuels could be made to combust. The usual fuel used was Fuel Oil, similar to modern-day diesel, but natural gas, kerosene, paraffin, crude oil, vegetable oil, creosote and even in some cases coal dust were used in hot-bulb engines. This made the hot-bulb engine very cheap to run, since it could be run on cheaply available fuels. Some operators even ran engines on used engine oil, thus providing almost free power. Recently, this multi-fuel ability has led to an interest in using hot bulb engines in developing nations where they can be run on locally produced biofuel.

Due to the lengthy pre-heating time, hot-bulb engines were nearly always guaranteed to start quickly, even in extremely cold conditions. This made them popular choices in cold regions such as Canada and Scandinavia, where steam engines were not viable and early gasoline and diesel engines could not be relied on to operate.

Uses

The reliability of hot-bulb engine, their ability to run on many fuels and the fact that they can be left running for hours or days at a time made them extremely popular with agricultural and forestry users, where they were used for pumping and powering milling, sawing and threshing machinery. Hot-bulb engines were used on road-rollers and tractors.

J.V. Svensons Motorfabrikk, i Augustendal in Sweden used hot bulb engines in their Typ 1 motor plough, produced from 1912 to 1925. Munktells Mekaniska Värkstads AB, in Eskilstuna, Sweden, produced agricultural tractors with hot bulb engines from 1913 onwards. Heinrich Lanz Mannheim AG, in Mannheim, Germany, started to use hot bulb engines in 1921, in the Lanz Bulldog HL. Other well known tractor manufacturers that used bulb engines were Bubba, Gambino, Landini and Orsi in Italy, HSCS in Hungary, SFV in France Ursus in Poland, and Marshall in England.

At the start of the 20th century there were several hundreds of European manufacturers of hot bulb engines for marine use. In Sweden alone there were over 70 manufacturers, of which Bolinders is the best known (in the 1920s they had about 80% of the world market). The Norwegian SABB was a very popular hot bulb engine for small fishing boats and many of them are still in working order.


A limitation of the design of the engine was that it could only run over quite a narrow (and slow) speed band, typically 50-150 R.P.M.. This made the hot-bulb engine difficult to adapt to automotive uses other than vehicles such as tractors, where speed was not a major requirement. This limitation was of little consequence for stationary applications, where the hot-bulb engine was very popular.

Owing to the lengthy pre-heating time, hot-bulb engines only found favor with users who needed to run engines for long periods of time, where the pre-heating process only represented a small percentage of the overall running period. This included marine use (especially in fishing boats), electricity generation (especially in remote areas where coal was not easily available for steam engines) and pumping duties.

The engines were also used in areas where the fire of a steam engine would be an unacceptable fire risk. Akroyd-Stuart developed the world's first oil-engined locomotive (the 'Lachesis') for the Woolwich Arsenal, where the use of locomotives had previously been impossible due to the risk. Hot-bulb engines proved very popular for industrial engines in the early 20th century, but lacked the power to be used in anything larger.

Compression ignition

Herbert Akroyd Stuart was always keen to improve the efficency of his engine. The obvious way to do this was to raise the compression ratio to increase the engine's thermal efficiency. However, above ratios of around 8:1 the fuel oil in the vaporiser would ignite before the piston reached the limit of its travel. This pre-detonation caused rough running, power loss and ultimately engine damage (see engine knocking for more information). Working with engineers at Hornsby's, Akroyd Stuart developed a system whereby the compression ratio was increased to as much as 18:1 and fuel oil was delivered to the cylinder only when the piston reached top dead center, thus preventing pre-ignition.

This system was patented in October 1890 and development continued. In 1892 (5 years before Rudolf Diesel's first prototype), engineers at Hornsby's built an experimental engine. The vaporizer was replaced with a standard cylinder head and used a high-pressure fuel nozzle system. The engine could be started from cold and ran for 6 hours, making it the world's first internal combustion engine to run on purely compression ignition. However, to build a fully practical fuel injection system required using machining techniques and building to tolerances that were not possible to mass produce at the time. Hornsby's was also working at full capacity building and selling hot-bulb engines, so these developments were not pursued.

Replacement

From around 1910, the diesel engine was improved dramatically, with more power being available at greater efficiencies than the hot-bulb engine could manage (Diesel engines can achieve nearly 50% efficiency if designed with maximum economy in mind). Diesel engines offered greater power for a given engine size due to the more efficient combustion method (they had no hot-bulb, relying purely on compression-ignition) and greater ease of use as they required no pre-heating.

The hot-bulb engine was limited in its scope in terms of speed and overall power-to-size ratio. To make a hot-bulb engine capable of powering a ship or locomotive, it would have been prohibitively large and heavy. The hot-bulb engines used in Landini tractors were as much as 20 liters in capacity for relatively low power outputs. Hot-bulb engines are difficult to make in multi-cylinder versions, and creating even combustion throughout the multiple hot-bulbs is a complex business. The hot-bulb engine's low compression ratio in comparison to diesel engines limited its efficiency, power output and speed. Most hot-bulb engines could run at a maximum speed of around 100 rpm, whilst by the 1930s diesel engines capable of 2,000 rpm were being built. Also, due to the design of hot bulb and the limitations of current technology in regards to the injector system, most hot-bulb engines were single-speed engines, running at a fixed speed, or in a very narrow speed range. Diesel engines can be designed to operate over a much wider speed range, making them more versatile. This made these medium-sized diesels a very popular choice for use in generator sets, replacing the hot-bulb engine as the engine of choice for small-scale power generation. The Hot tube engine addresses the speed limitation and gave great flexibility in operation, although the solution induced a source of weakness in the design.

With the development of small-capacity, high-speed diesel engines in the 1930s and 1940s, hot-bulb engines fell dramatically out of favour. The last large-scale manufacturer of hot-bulb engines stopped producing them in the 1950s and they are now virtually extinct in commercial use, except in very remote areas of the developing world. An exception to this is marine use – hot-bulb engines were widely fitted to inland barges and narrowboats in continental Europe and the UK. The UK's first motor narrowboats Cadbury 1 and Cadbury 2 (1911) were powered by Bolinder single-cylinder hot-bulb engines, and this type became common between the 1920s and the 1950s. With hot-bulb engines being generally long-lived and ideally suited to such a use, it is not uncommon to find vessels still fitted with their original hot-bulb engines today.

Ignoring the obvious differences (electrical heating, differing fuels, high RPMs – at least in the small model aircraft types) the modern Glow Plug engine could be considered the latest incarnation of these "hot spot" ignition based engines.

Differences from the Diesel Engine

The hot-bulb engine is often confused with the diesel engine, and it is true that the two engines are very similar. Aside from the obvious lack of a hot-bulb vaporiser in the diesel engine, the main differences are that:

* The hot-bulb engine uses both compression-ignition and the heat retained in the vaporizer to ignite the fuel.
* The diesel engine uses just compression-ignition to ignite the fuel, and it operates at pressures many times higher than the hot-bulb engine.

Due to the much greater and longer-term success of the diesel engine, today hot-bulb engines are sometimes called 'semi-diesels' or 'semi diesel' because they partly use compression-ignition in their cycle.

When both types of engines were made and sold in large numbers, both were classed as 'oil engines', since they ran on fuel oil. Hot-bulb engines were often known as 'Hot Start Oil Engines', because they had to be pre-heated. Similarly, diesel engines were known as 'Cold Start Oil Engines', because they could be started with the engine cold.

There is also a crucial difference in the timing of the fuel injection process:

* In the hot-bulb engine, fuel is sprayed into the vaporizer during the Induction Stroke as air is drawn into the cylinder.
* In the diesel engine, fuel is injected into the cylinder in the final stages of the Compression Stroke.

There is a detail difference in the method of fuel injection:

* The hot-bulb engine uses a medium-pressure mechanical jerk pump to deliver fuel to the cylinder through a sprayer- a simple multi-holed nozzle.
* In the original diesel engine, fuel was delivered to the cylinder by highly compressed air through an injector, which used a spring-loaded pin to control fuel delivery though the nozzle.

The complex and heavy air-blast system used in early Diesels limited the speed the engine could run at and the minimum size a diesel engine could be built to. This was needed to inject fuel under sufficient pressure for it to enter the highly compressed air in the cylinder. In hot-bulb engines fuel is injected before compression takes place, allowing the lighter, more accurate system to be used. Only when Akroyd-Stuart's mechanical pump-and-sprayer system that he developed for his hot-bulb engine was adapted by Robert Bosch for use in diesel engines (by making the system run at a much higher pressure and combining it with a modified version of Diesel's injector) were high-speed diesel engines practical.

Production

Hot bulb engines were built by a large number of manufacturers, usually in modest series. The Pythagoras Engine Factory in Norrtälje in Sweden is kept as a museum (the Pythagoras Mechanical Workshop Museum), and has a functioning production line and extensive factory archives.


Hot tube engine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The hot tube engine is a relative of the hot bulb engine with better timing control. The hot bulb engine only ran well at one speed- and a low one at that, typically 100 RPM. The timing of a hot tube engine is controlled by means of varying the length of the Hot-tube ignitor, which is longer and thinner than the hot bulb on a hot bulb engine. Length of the tube controls when the charge ignites, and allows different operating speeds to be selected. If made variable, this makes for adjustable engine speed, but also induces a mechanical weakness in the engine which tends to lead to failure. Both engine types are now replaced by diesels, which can be made to operate over varying loads and speeds in any size with modern methods. Hot bulbs are still used in remote areas where the extreme fuel flexibility is a major advantage. Hot tube engines may also be found there, if their difficulties with the adjustable tube can be overcome, or accepted and lived with.

Diesel engine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A diesel engine is an internal combustion engine which operates using the Diesel cycle. Invented in 1892 by German engineer Rudolf Diesel, it was based on the hot bulb engine design and patented on February 23, 1893.

Diesel engines use compression ignition, a process by which fuel is injected after the air is compressed in the combustion chamber causing the fuel to self ignite. By contrast, a gasoline engine utilizes the Otto cycle, in which fuel and air are mixed before ignition is initiated by a spark plug. Most diesel engines have large pistons, therefore drawing more air and fuel which results in a bigger and more powerful combustion. This is effective in large vehicles such as trucks and diesel locomotives.

Patent controversy

Like many other inventions, the credit for the invention of the diesel engine is in dispute. While Rudolf Diesel is the patent holder and popularly recognized inventor of his namesake engine, Herbert Akroyd Stuart and Charles Richard Binney had previously patented a compression ignition engine designed to run on coal dust. The credit for the invention thus hinges on whether compression ignition or oil fuel is considered the defining property. Diesel's patent (No. 7241) was filed in 1892.[1] However, Herbert Akroyd Stuart and Charles Richard Binney had already obtained a patent (No. 7146) in 1890 entitled: "Improvements in Engines Operated by the Explosion of Mixtures of Combustible Vapour or Gas and Air" which described the world's first compression-ignition engine.[2] Akroyd-Stuart constructed the first compression-ignition oil engine in Bletchley, England in 1891 and leased the rights to Richard Hornsby & Sons, who by July 1892, five years before Diesel's prototype, had a diesel engine working for Newport Sanitary Authority. By 1896, diesel tractors and locomotives were being built in some quantity in Grantham. Importantly, Diesel's airblast injection system did not become part of subsequent "diesel" engines. From around 1910, manufacturers building diesel engines under patent from MAN began building engines with 'solid' injection systems, where fuel is delivered to the cylinder by a high pressure jerk-pump rather than compressed air. This system was invented by Herbert Akroyd Stuart and used on Ruston-built oil engines. MAN continued to build engines to Diesel's original design into the 1920s. By this time Robert Bosch had developed the spring-loaded fuel injector, which provided greater accuracy than the simple nozzle of earlier systems. All mechanical-injection diesel engines built from the 1920s onwards used some form of jerk-pump and spring-nozzle injection. No engine has been built to Diesel's original design since the 1930s.

Early history timeline

* 1862: Nicholas Immel develops his coal gas engine, similar to a modern gasoline engine.

* 1891: Herbert Akroyd Stuart,Wally Godfrey was the brains of the diesel engines Bletchley perfects his oil engine, and leases rights to Hornsby of England to build engines. They build the first cold start, compression ignition engines.

* 1892: Hornsby engine No. 101 is built and installed in a waterworks. It was in the MAN truck museum in Stockport, and is now in the Anson Engine Museum in Poynton. T.H. Barton at Hornsbys builds an experimental version where the vaporiser was replaced with a cylinder head and the pressure increased. Automatic ignition was achieved through compression alone (the first time this had happened), and the engine ran for six hours. Diesel would achieve much the same thing five years later, claiming the achievement for himself.

* 1892: Rudolf Diesel develops the principles of his proposed Carnot heat engine type motor which would burn powdered coal dust. He is employed by refrigeration genius Carl von Linde, then Munich iron manufacturer MAN AG, and later by the Sulzer engine company of Switzerland. He borrows ideas from them and leaves a legacy with all firms.

* 1892: John Froelich builds his first oil engine powered farm tractor.

* 1893: August 10th — Diesel builds a working version of his ideas.

* 1894: Witte, Reid, and Fairbanks start building oil engines with a variety of ignition systems.

* 1896: Hornsby builds diesel tractors and railway engines.

* 1897: Winton produces and drives the first US built gas automobile; he later builds diesel plants. On February 17th, Diesel builds his first working prototype, which narrowly avoids a catastrophic explosion in Augsburg. The engine was not really ready for market until 1908, thanks to other people's improvements.

* 1897: Mirrlees, Watson & Yaryan build the first British diesel engine under license from Rudolf Diesel. This is now displayed in the Anson Engine Museum at Poynton, Cheshire, UK.

* 1898: Busch installs a Rudolf Diesel type engine in his brewery in St. Louis. It is the first in the United States. Rudolf Diesel perfects his compression start engine, patents, and licences it. This engine, pictured above, is in a German museum. Burmeister & Wain (B & W) of Copenhagen, Denmark buy rights to build diesel engines.

* 1899: Diesel licenses his engine to builders Krupp and Sulzer, who become famous builders.

* 1902: F. Rundlof invents the two-stroke crankcase, scavenged hot bulb engine.

* 1902: A company named Forest City started manufacturing diesel generators.

* 1903: Ship Gjoa transits the ice-filled Northwest Passage, aided with a Dan kerosene engine.

* 1904: French build the first diesel submarine, the Z.

* 1908: Bolinder-Munktell starts building two stroke hot-bulb engines.

* 1912: First diesel ship MS Selandia is built. SS Fram, polar explorer Amundsen’s flagship, is converted to an AB Atlas diesel.

* 1913: Fairbanks Morse starts building its Y model semi-diesel engine. US Navy submarines use NELSECO units. Rudolf Diesel died mysteriously when he took a ship (SS Dresden) to cross the English Channel.

* 1914: German U-Boats are powered by MAN diesels. War service proves engine's reliability.

* 1920s: Fishing fleets convert to oil engines. Atlas-Imperial of Oakland, Union, and Lister diesels appear.

* 1922: Mack Boring & Parts Company is established.

* 1924: First diesel trucks appear.

* 1928: Canadian National Railway employs a diesel shunter in their yards.

* 1930: Edward McGovern Sr., founder of Mack Boring & Parts Company, opens the first diesel-only engine institute in North America.

* 1930s: Clessie Cummins starts with Dutch diesel engines, and then builds his own into trucks and a Duesenberg luxury car at the Daytona speedway.

* 1930s: Caterpillar starts building diesels for their tractors.

* 1933: Citroën introduced the Rosalie, a passenger car with the world’s first commercially available diesel engine developed with Harry Ricardo.

* 1934: General Motors starts a GM diesel research facility. It builds diesel railroad engines—The Pioneer Zephyr—and goes on to found the General Motors Electro-Motive Division, which becomes important building engines for landing craft and tanks in the Second World War. GM then applies this knowledge to market control with its famous Green Leakers for buses and railroad engines.

* 1934-35: Junkers Motorenwerke in Germany starts production of the Jumo aviation diesel engine "family", the most famous of these being the Jumo 205, of which over 900 examples are produced into the outbreak of World War II.

* 1936: Mercedes-Benz builds the 260D diesel car. AT&SF inaugurates the diesel train Super Chief.

* 1936: Airship Hindenburg is powered by diesel engines.

How diesel engines work

In mechanical terms, the internal construction of a diesel engine is similar to its gasoline counterpart—components such as pistons, connecting rods and a crankshaft are present in both. Like a gasoline engine, a diesel engine may operate on a four-stroke cycle (similar to the gasoline unit's Otto cycle), or a two-stroke cycle, albeit with significant dissimilarity to the gasoline equivalent. In both cases, the principal differences lie in the handling of air and fuel, and the method of ignition.

A diesel engine relies upon compression ignition to burn its fuel, instead of the spark plug used in a gasoline engine. If air is compressed to a high degree, its temperature will increase to a point where fuel will burn upon contact. This principle is used in both four-stroke and two-stroke diesel engines to produce power.

Unlike a gasoline engine, which draws an air/fuel mixture into the cylinder during the intake stroke, the diesel aspirates air alone. Following intake, the cylinder is sealed and the air charge is highly compressed to heat it to the temperature required for ignition. Whereas a gasoline engine's compression ratio is rarely greater than 11:1 to avoid damaging preignition, a diesel's compression ratio is usually between 16:1 and 25:1. This extremely high level of compression causes the air temperature to increase to 700 to 900 degrees Celsius (1300 to 1650 degrees Fahrenheit).

As the piston approaches top dead center (TDC), fuel oil is injected into the cylinder at high pressure, causing the fuel charge to be nebulized. Owing to the high air temperature in the cylinder, ignition instantly occurs, causing a rapid and considerable increase in cylinder temperature and pressure (generating the characteristic Diesel "knock"). The piston is driven downward with great force, pushing on the connecting rod and turning the crankshaft.

When the piston nears bottom dead center the spent combustion gases are expelled from the cylinder to prepare for the next cycle. In many cases, the exhaust gases will be used to drive a turbocharger, which will increase the volume of the intake air charge, resulting in cleaner combustion and greater efficiency.

The above sequence generally describes how a diesel operates. However, there are striking differences between the four-stroke and two-stroke versions:

Four-Stroke
The cycle starts with the intake stroke, which begins when the piston is near top dead center. The intake valve is opened, creating a passage from the exterior of the engine (generally through an air filter assembly), through the intake port in the cylinder head and into the cylinder itself. As the piston moves toward bottom dead center, a partial vacuum develops, causing air to enter the cylinder. In the case of a turbocharged engine, the air is rammed into the cylinder at higher than atmospheric pressure. As the piston passes through bottom dead center, the intake valve closes, sealing the cylinder.

The compression stroke begins as the piston passes through bottom dead center and starts upward. Compression will continue until the piston approaches top dead center. The energy required for the compression stroke comes from the momentum of a flywheel on the crankshaft as well as (in multi-cylinder engines) other pistons in their power stroke.

The power stroke occurs as the piston reaches top dead center at the end of the compression stroke. At this time, fuel injection occurs, resulting in combustion and the production of useful work.

The final stroke is the exhaust stroke, which begins as the piston approaches bottom dead center following ignition. The exhaust valve in the cylinder head is opened and as the piston starts upward, the spent combustion gases are forced out of the cylinder. Near top dead center the intake valve will start to open before the exhaust valve is fully closed, a condition referred to as valve overlap. Overlap produces a flow of cooling intake air over the exhaust valve, prolonging its life. Following the completion of the exhaust stroke the cycle will begin anew.

Two-Stroke
Intake begins when the piston is near bottom dead center. Air is admitted to the cylinder through ports in the cylinder wall (there are no intake valves). Since the piston is near bottom dead center, aspiration due to atmospheric pressure isn't possible. Therefore a mechanical blower or hybrid turbocharger (a turbocharger that is mechanically driven from the crankshaft at low engine speeds) is employed to charge the cylinder with air. In the early phase of intake, the air charge is also used to force out any remaining combustion gases from the previous power stroke, a process referred to as scavenging. As the piston passes through bottom dead center, the exhaust valve(s) will be closed and, owing to the pressure generated by the blower or turbocharger, the cylinder will be filled with air. Once the piston starts upward, the air intake ports in the cylinder walls will be covered, sealing the cylinder. At this point, compression will commence. Note that exhaust and intake actually occur in one stroke, the period during which the piston is near the bottom of the cylinder.

As the piston rises, compression takes place and near top dead center, fuel injection will occur, resulting in combustion, driving the piston downward. As the piston moves downward in the cylinder it will reach a point where the exhaust valves will be opened to expel the combustion gases. Continued movement of the piston will expose the air intake ports in the cylinder wall, and the cycle will start anew. Note that the cylinder will fire on each revolution, as opposed to the four-stroke engine, in which the cylinder fires on every other revolution.

Cold weather and diesels

In cold weather, diesel engines can be difficult to start because the mass of the cylinder block and cylinder head absorb the heat of compression, thus preventing ignition. Spark ignition engines undergo the same problem, though they have the added benefit of a spark plug to help cause ignition. The main reason diesel engines take a long time to warm up in cold weather is the lack of a throttle. Spark ignition engines are throttled, so only the right amount of air comes in at a time. This is less efficient, but spark plugs only work near the stoichiometric, or the proper ratio of air to fuel for complete and most efficient combustion, mixture of fuel and air. Diesel engines accept a cylinder full of air and measure in the right amount of fuel. So each time the intake valve on a diesel opens, a full charge of cold air enters the cylinder. This cools the cylinder back down. The heat gained from each combustion process therefore can only cause a gain in temperature that is much, much smaller than it would be in a spark ignition engine.

Some engines use small electric heaters called glow plugs inside the cylinder to help ignite fuel when starting. Some even use resistive grid heaters in the intake manifold to warm the inlet air until the engine reaches operating temperature. Engine block heaters (electric resistive heaters in the engine block) connected to the utility grid are often used when an engine is turned off for extended periods (more than an hour) in cold weather to reduce startup time and engine wear. In the past, a wider variety of cold-start methods were used. Some engines, such as Detroit Diesels and Lister-Petter engines, used a system to introduce small amounts of ether into the inlet manifold to start combustion. Sabb marine engines and Field Marshall tractors (amongst others) used slow-burning solid-fuel 'cigarettes' which were fitted into the cylinder head as a primitive glow plug. Lucas developed the 'Thermostart', where an electrical heating element was combined with a small fuel valve. Diesel fuel slowly dripped from the valve onto the hot element and ignited. The flame heated the inlet manifold and when the engine was turned over the flame was drawn into the combustion chamber to start combustion. The most extreme cold-starting system was probably that developed by International Harvester for their WD-40 tractor of the 1930s. This had a 7-liter 4-cylinder engine which ran as a diesel, but was started as a petrol engine. The cylinder head had valves which opened for a portion of the compression stroke to reduce the effective compression ratio, and a magneto produced the spark. An automatic ratchet system automatically disengaged the ignition system and closed the valves once the engine had run for 30 seconds. The operator then switched off the petrol fuel system and opened the throttle on the diesel injection system.

Such systems fell out of favor when electrical glow plug systems proved to be the simplest to operate and produce. Direct-injection systems advanced to the extent that cold-starting systems were not needed and then electronic fuel injection systems rendered most cold-start system unnecessary.

Diesel fuel is also prone to "waxing" or "gelling" in cold weather, terms for the solidification of diesel oil into a partially crystalline state. The crystals build up in the fuel (especially in fuel filters), eventually starving the engine of fuel and causing it to stop running. Low-output electric heaters in fuel tanks and around fuel lines are used to solve this problem. Also, most engines have a "spill return" system, by which any excess fuel from the injector pump and injectors is returned to the fuel tank. Once the engine has warmed, returning warm fuel prevents waxing in the tank. Fuel technology has improved so that with special additives waxing rarely occurs in all but the coldest weather.

A vital component of all diesel engines is a mechanical or electronic governor, which limits the speed of the engine by controlling the rate of fuel delivery. Unlike Otto-cycle engines, incoming air is not throttled and a diesel engine without a governor can easily overspeed, resulting in its destruction. Mechanically governed fuel injection systems are driven by the engine's gear train. These systems use a combination of springs and weights to control fuel delivery relative to both load and speed. Modern, electronically controlled diesel engines control fuel delivery and limit the maximum rpm by use of an electronic control module (ECM) or electronic control unit (ECU). The ECM/ECU receives an engine speed signal, as well as other operating parameters such as intake manifold pressure and fuel temperature, from a sensor and controls the amount of fuel and start of injection timing through electric or hydraulic actuators to maximize power and efficiency and minimize emissions.

Controlling the timing of the start of injection of fuel into the cylinder is a key to minimizing emissions, and maximizing fuel economy (efficiency), of the engine. The timing is usually measured in units of crank angle of the piston before top dead centre. For example, if the ECM/ECU initiates fuel injection when the piston is 10 degrees before TDC, the start of injection, or timing, is said to be 10° BTDC. Optimal timing will depend on the engine design as well as its speed and load.

Advancing the start of injection (injecting before the piston reaches TDC) results in higher in-cylinder pressure and temperature, and higher efficiency, but also results in elevated engine noise and increased oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions due to higher combustion temperatures. On the other hand, delayed start of injection causes incomplete combustion, reduced fuel efficiency and an increase in black exhaust smoke, containing a considerable amount of particulate matter (PM) and unburned hydrocarbons (HC).

Early fuel injection systems

The modern diesel engine is a combination of two inventors' creations. In all major aspects, it holds true to Rudolf Diesel's original design, that of igniting fuel by compression at an extremely high pressure within the cylinder. However, nearly all present-day diesel engines use the so-called solid injection system invented by Herbert Akroyd Stuart for his hot bulb engine (a compression-ignition engine that precedes the diesel engine and operates slightly differently). Solid injection raises the fuel to extreme pressures by mechanical pumps and delivers it to the combustion chamber by pressure-activated injectors in an almost solid-state jet. Diesel's original engine injected fuel with the assistance of compressed air, which atomized the fuel and forced it into the engine through a nozzle (a similar principle to an aerosol spray). This is called an air-blast injection. The size of the gas compressor needed to power such a system made early diesel engines very heavy and large for their power outputs, and the need to drive a compressor lowered power output even more. Early marine diesels often had smaller auxiliary engines whose sole purpose was to drive the compressors to supply air to the main engine's injector system. Such a system was too bulky and inefficient to be used for road-going automotive vehicles.

Solid injection systems are lighter, simpler, and allow for much higher speed, and so are universally used for automotive diesel engines. Air-blast systems provide very efficient combustion under low-speed, high-load conditions, especially when running on poor-quality fuels, so some large marine engines use this injection method. Air-blast injection also raises the fuel temperature during the injection process, so is sometimes known as hot-fuel injection. In contrast, solid injection is sometimes called cold-fuel injection.

The vast majority of diesel engines in service today use solid injection and the information below relates to that system. In the diesel engine, only air is introduced into the combustion chamber. The air is then compressed to about 600 pounds per square inch (psi), compared to about 200 psi in the gasoline engine. This high compression heats the air to about 1,000 °F (538 °C). At this moment, fuel is injected directly into the compressed air. The fuel is ignited by the heat, causing a rapid expansion of gases that drive the piston downward, supplying power to the crankshaft. In Diesel's manuals, he described the supply of compressed gas into the cylinder to promote the final burn. It is now possible to fumigate the air intake with a small quantity of LPG/CNG. The now air-gas mixture is compressed as above, and when the diesel ignites, the small quantity of gas ignites as well, causing a more rapid and more complete burn of the diesel. Most diesel engines waste between 30 and 15% of the diesel fuel, so by burning the near total amount of diesel consumed on each stroke, the mechanical effect is to improve the torque curve by as much as 28%. The net outcome of applying gas into diesel is improved fuel economy via better torque at the driving wheels resulting in fewer gear changes, and greatly reduced exhaust emissions.

Advantages of the diesel engine are numerous. It burns considerably less fuel than a gasoline engine performing the same work. It has no ignition system to attend to. It can deliver much more of its rated horsepower on a continuous basis than can a gasoline engine. The life of a diesel engine is generally longer than a gasoline engine. Although diesel fuel will burn in open air, it will not explode unless compressed.

Some disadvantages to diesel engines are that they are very heavy for the horsepower they produce due to the required heavy design, and their initial cost is much higher than a comparable gasoline engine.

Mechanical and electronic injection

Older engines make use of a mechanical fuel pump and valve assembly that is driven by the engine crankshaft, usually from the timing belt or chain. These engines use simple injectors that are basically very precise spring-loaded valves that open and close at a specific fuel pressure. The pump assembly consists of a pump that pressurizes the fuel and a disc-shaped valve that rotates at half crankshaft speed. The valve has a single aperture to the pressurized fuel on one side, and one aperture for each injector on the other. As the engine turns, the valve discs will line up and deliver a burst of pressurized fuel to the injector at the cylinder about to enter its power stroke. The injector valve is forced open by the fuel pressure, and the diesel is injected until the valve rotates out of alignment and the fuel pressure to that injector is cut off. Engine speed is controlled by a third disc, which rotates only a few degrees and is controlled by the throttle lever. This disc alters the width of the aperture through which the fuel passes, and therefore how long the injectors are held open before the fuel supply is cut, which controls the amount of fuel injected.

This contrasts with the more modern method of having a separate fuel pump which supplies fuel constantly at high pressure to each injector. Each injector has a solenoid, is operated by an electronic control unit, which enables more accurate control of injector opening times that depend on other control conditions, such as engine speed and loading, resulting in better engine performance and fuel economy. This design is also mechanically simpler than the combined pump and valve design, making it generally more reliable, and less noisy, than its mechanical counterpart.

Both mechanical and electronic injection systems can be used in either direct or indirect injection configurations.

Older diesel engines with mechanical injection pumps could be inadvertently run in reverse, albeit very inefficiently, as witnessed by massive amounts of soot being ejected from the air intake. This was often a consequence of push starting a vehicle using the wrong gear.

Indirect injection


An indirect injection diesel engine delivers fuel into a chamber off the combustion chamber, called a prechamber or ante-chamber, where combustion begins and then spreads into the main combustion chamber, assisted by turbulence created in the chamber. This system allows for a smoother, quieter running engine, and because combustion is assisted by turbulence, injector pressures can be lower, which in the days of mechanical injection systems allowed high-speed running suitable for road vehicles (typically up to speeds of around 4,000 rpm). The prechamber had the disadvantage of increasing heat loss to the engine's cooling system, introducing pumping losses in the narrow throat connecting it to the main cylinder, and restricting the combustion burn, which reduced the efficiency by between 5% – 10% in comparison to a direct injection engine, and nearly all require some form of cold start device such as glow plugs. Indirect injection engines were used widely in small-capacity, high-speed diesel engines in automotive, marine and construction uses from the 1950s, until direct injection technology advanced in the 1980s. Indirect injection engines are cheaper to build and it is easier to produce smooth, quiet-running vehicles with a simple mechanical system, so such engines are still often used in applications that carry less stringent emissions controls than highway vehicles, such as small marine engines, generators, tractors, and pumps. With electronic injection systems, indirect injection engines are still used in some road-going vehicles, but most prefer the greater efficiency of direct injection.

Direct injection

Modern diesel engines make use of one of the following direct injection methods:

Distributor and Inline pump direct injection

The first incarnations[citation needed] of direct injection diesels used a rotary pump much like indirect injection diesels; however the injectors were mounted in the top of the combustion chamber rather than in a separate pre-combustion chamber. Examples are vehicles such as the Ford Transit and the Austin Rover Maestro and Montego with their Perkins Prima engine. The problem with these vehicles was the harsh noise that they made and particulate (smoke) emissions. This is the main reason that this type of engine was limited to commercial vehicles, the notable exceptions being the Maestro, Montego and Fiat Croma passenger cars. Fuel consumption was about fifteen to twenty percent lower than indirect injection diesels, which for some buyers was enough to compensate for the extra noise.

One of the first small-capacity, mass produced direct injection engines that could be called refined was developed by the Rover Group.[citation needed] The 200Tdi 2.5-liter four-cylinder turbodiesel was used by Land Rover in their vehicles from 1989, and the engine used an aluminum cylinder head, Bosch two-stage injection and multi-phase glow plugs to produce a smooth-running and economical engine while still using mechanical fuel injection.

This type of engine was transformed by electronic control of the injection pump, pioneered by the Volkswagen Group with the Audi 100 TDI introduced in 1989. The injection pressure was still only around 300 bar, but the injection timing, fuel quantity, EGR and turbo boost were all electronically controlled. This gave much more precise control of these parameters which made refinement much more acceptable and emissions acceptably low. Fairly quickly the technology trickled down to more mass market vehicles such as the Mark 3 Golf TDI where it proved to be very popular. These cars were both more economical and more powerful than indirect injection competitors of their day.

Unit direct injection


Unit direct injection also injects fuel directly into the cylinder of the engine. However, in this system the injector and the pump are combined into one unit positioned over each cylinder. Each cylinder thus has its own pump, feeding its own injector, which prevents pressure fluctuations and allows more consistent injection to be achieved. This type of injection system, also developed by Bosch, is used by Volkswagen AG in cars (where it is called a Pumpe-Düse-System — literally "pump-nozzle system") and by Mercedes Benz ("PLD") and most major diesel engine manufacturers in large commercial engines (CAT, Cummins, Detroit Diesel, Volvo). With recent advancements, the pump pressure has been raised to 2,050 bar (205 MPa), allowing injection parameters similar to common rail systems.

Common rail direct injection



In older diesel engines, a distributor-type injection pump, regulated by the engine, supplies bursts of fuel to injectors which are simply nozzles through which the diesel is sprayed into the engine's combustion chamber.

In common rail systems, the distributor injection pump is eliminated. Instead, a high-pressure pump pressurises fuel at up to 2,000 bar (200 MPa, 30,000 psi)[3], in a "common rail". The common rail is a tube that branches off to computer-controlled injector valves, each of which contains a precision-machined nozzle and a plunger driven by a solenoid or piezoelectric actuators. (For example, Mercedes uses piezoelectric actuators in their high power output 3.0L V6 common rail diesel).

Most European automakers have common rail diesels in their model lineups, even for commercial vehicles. Some Japanese manufacturers, such as Toyota, Nissan and recently Honda, have also developed common rail diesel engines. Some Indian companies have also successfully implemented this technology.

Different car makers refer to their common rail engines by different names, e.g., DaimlerChrysler's CDI, Ford Motor Company's TDCi (most of these engines are manufactured by PSA), Fiat Group's (Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Lancia) JTD, Renault's dCi, GM/Opel's CDTi (most of these engines are manufactured by Fiat, other by Isuzu), Hyundai's CRDi, Mitsubishi's DI-D, PSA Peugeot Citroën's HDi (engines for commercial diesel vehicles are made by Ford Motor Company), Toyota's D-4D, and so on. In India, Mahindra & Mahindra produce their 'Scorpio-CRDe' and Tata Motors their 'Safari-DICOR'.

Types of diesel engines

Early diesel engines

Rudolf Diesel intended his engine to replace the steam engine as the primary power source for industry. As such, diesel engines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries used the same basic layout and form as industrial steam engines, with long-bore cylinders, external valve gear, cross-head bearings and an open crankshaft connected to a large flywheel. Smaller engines would be built with vertical cylinders, while most medium- and large-sized industrial engines were built with horizontal cylinders, just as steam engines had been. Engines could be built with more than one cylinder in both cases. The largest early diesels resembled the triple-expansion reciprocating engine steam engine, being tens of feet high with vertical cylinders arranged in-line. These early engines ran at very slow speeds — partly due to the limitations of their air-blast injector equipment and partly so they would be compatible with the majority of industrial equipment designed for steam engines; maximum speeds of between 100 and 300 rpm were common. Engines were usually started by allowing compressed air into the cylinders to turn the engine, although smaller engines could be started by hand.

In the early decades of the 20th century, when large diesel engines were first being used, the engines took a form similar to the compound steam engines common at the time, with the piston being connected to the connecting rod via a crosshead bearing. Following steam engine practice, double-acting four-stroke diesel engines were constructed to increase power output, with combustion taking place on both sides of the piston, with two sets of valve gear and fuel injection. This system also meant that the engine's direction of rotation could be reversed by altering the injector timing, so the engine could be coupled directly to the propeller without the need for a gearbox. While it produced large amounts of power and was very efficient, the double-acting diesel engine's main problem was producing a good seal where the piston rod passed through the bottom of the lower combustion chamber to the crosshead bearing. By the 1930s it was found easier and more reliable to fit turbochargers to the engines, although crosshead bearings are still used to reduce the stress on the crankshaft bearings, and the wear on the cylinders, in large long-stroke main engines.

Modern diesel engines

As with gasoline engines, there are two classes of diesel engines in current use: two-stroke and four-stroke. The four-stroke type is the "classic" version, tracing its lineage back to Rudolf Diesel's prototype. It is also the most commonly used form, being the preferred power source for many motor vehicles, especially buses and trucks. Much larger engines, such as used for railroad locomotion and marine propulsion, are often two-stroke units, offering a more favorable horsepower-to-weight ratio, as well as better fuel economy. The most powerful engines in the world are two-cycle diesels of mammoth proportions. These so-called low speed diesels are able to achieve thermal efficiencies approaching fifty percent.

Two-stroke diesel operation is similar to that of gasoline counterparts, except that fuel is not mixed with air prior to induction, and the crankcase does not take an active role in the cycle. The traditional two-stroke design relies upon a mechanically driven positive displacement blower to charge the cylinders with air prior to compression and ignition. The charging process also assists in expelling (scavenging) combustion gases remaining from the previous power stroke. The archetype of the modern form of the two stroke Diesel is the Detroit Diesel engine, in which the blower pressurizes a chamber in the engine block that is often referred to as the "air box." The (much larger) Electromotive prime mover utilized in EMD Diesel-electric locomotives is built to the same principle.

In a two-stroke diesel engine, as the cylinder's piston approaches bottom dead center a passage between the air box and the cylinder is opened, permitting air flow into the cylinder. During this time, the exhaust valves are opened and some of the air flow forces the remaining combustion gases from the cylinder—this is the scavenging process. As the piston passes through bottom center and starts upward, the passage is closed and compression commences, culminating in fuel injection and ignition. Refer to two-stroke Diesel engines for more discussion concerning aspiration issues with a two-stroke engine.

Normally, the number of cylinders are used in multiples of two, although any number of cylinders can be used as long as the load on the crankshaft is counterbalanced to prevent excessive vibration. The inline-six cylinder design is the most prolific in light to medium-duty engines, though small V8 and larger inline-four displacement engines are also common. Small-capacity engines (generally considered to be those below five liters in capacity) are generally four or six cylinder types, with the four cylinder being the most common type found in automotive uses. Five cylinder diesel engines have also been produced, being a compromise between the smooth running of the six cylinder and the space-efficient dimensions of the four cylinder. Diesel engines for smaller plant machinery, boats, tractors, generators and pumps may be four, three or two cylinder types, with the single cylinder diesel engine remaining for light stationary work.

The desire to improve the diesel engine's power-to-weight ratio produced several novel cylinder arrangements to extract more power from a given capacity. The Napier Deltic engine, with three cylinders arranged in a triangular formation, each containing two opposed-action pistons, the whole engine having three crankshafts, is one of the better known. The Commer van company of the United Kingdom used a similar design for road vehicles, designed by Tillings-Stevens, member of the Rootes Group, the TS3. The Commer TS3 engine had 3 horizontal in-line cylinders, each with two opposed action pistons that worked through rocker arms, to connecting rods and had one crankshaft. While both these designs succeeded in producing greater power for a given capacity, they were complex and expensive to produce and operate, and when turbocharger technology improved in the 1960s, this was found to be a much more reliable and simple way of extracting more power.

As a footnote, prior to 1950, Sulzer started experimenting with two-stroke engines with boost pressures as high as 6 atmospheres, in which all of the output power was taken from an exhaust turbine. The two-stroke pistons directly drove air compressor pistons to make a positive displacement gas generator. Opposed pistons were connected by linkages instead of crankshafts. Several of these units could be connected together to provide power gas to one large output turbine. The overall thermal efficiency was roughly twice that of a simple gas turbine.

Carbureted compression ignition model engines

Simple compression ignition engines are made for model propulsion. This is quite similar to the typical glow-plug engine that runs on a mixture of methanol (methyl alcohol) and lubricant (typically castor oil) (and occasionally nitromethane to improve performance) with a hot wire filament to provide ignition. Rather than containing a glow plug, the head has an adjustable contra piston above the piston, forming the upper surface of the combustion chamber. This contra piston is restrained by an adjusting screw controlled by an external lever (or sometimes by a removable hex key). The fuel used contains Diethyl ether, which is highly volatile and has an extremely low flash point, combined with kerosene and a lubricant plus a very small proportion (typically 2%) of ignition improver such as Amyl nitrate or preferably Isopropyl nitrate nowadays.

The engine is started by reducing the compression and setting the spray bar mixture rich with the adjustable needle valve, gradually increasing the compression while cranking the engine. The compression is increased until the engine starts running. The mixture can then be leaned out and the compression increased. Compared to glow plug engines, model diesel engines exhibit much higher fuel economy, thus increasing endurance for the amount of fuel carried. They also exhibit higher torque, enabling the turning of a larger or higher pitched propeller at slower speed. Since the combustion occurs well before the exhaust port is uncovered, these engines are also considerably quieter (when unmuffled) than glow-plug engines of similar displacement. Compared to glow plug engines, model diesels are more difficult to throttle over a wide range of powers, making them less suitable for radio control models than either two or four stroke glow-plug engines although this difference is claimed to be less noticeable with the use of modern schneurle-ported engines.

Advantages and disadvantages versus spark-ignition engines

Power and fuel economy

Diesel engines are more efficient than gasoline (petrol) engines of the same power, resulting in lower fuel consumption. A common margin is 40% more miles per gallon for an efficient turbodiesel. For example, the current model Å koda Octavia, using Volkswagen Group engines, has a combined Euro rating of 38 miles per US gallon (6.2 L/100 km) for the 102 bhp (76 kW) petrol engine and 54 mpg (4.4 L/100 km) for the 105 bhp (78 kW) diesel engine. However, such a comparison doesn't take into account that diesel fuel is denser and contains about 15% more energy by volume. Although the calorific value of the fuel is slightly lower at 45.3 MJ/kg (megajoules per kilogram) than gasoline at 45.8 MJ/kg, liquid diesel fuel is significantly denser than liquid gasoline. When this is taken into account, diesel fuel has a higher energy density than petrol; this volumetric measure is the main concern of many people,[who?] as diesel fuel is sold by volume, not weight, and must be transported and stored in tanks of fixed size.

Adjusting the numbers to account for the energy density of diesel fuel, one finds the overall energy efficiency of the aforementioned paragraph is still about 20% greater for the diesel version, despite the weight penalty of the diesel engine. When comparing engines of relatively low power for the vehicle's weight (such as the 75 hp VW Golf), the diesel's overall energy efficiency advantage is reduced further but still between 10 and 15 percent.

While higher compression ratio is helpful in raising efficiency, diesel engines are much more economical than gasoline (petrol) engines when at low power and at engine idle. Unlike the petrol engine, diesels lack a butterfly valve (throttle) in the inlet system, which closes at idle. This creates parasitic drag on the incoming air, reducing the efficiency of petrol/gasoline engines at idle. Due to their lower heat losses, diesel engines have a lower risk of gradually overheating if left idling for long periods of time. In many applications, such as marine, agriculture, and railways, diesels are left idling unattended for many hours or sometimes days. These advantages are especially attractive in locomotives.

Where weight is an issue, diesel engines can be more massive than gasoline engines of similar output. A larger displacement diesel engine is required to produce the same power as a gasoline engine. This is essentially because the diesel must operate at lower engine speeds. Diesel fuel is injected just before ignition, leaving the fuel little time to reach all the oxygen in the cylinder. In the gasoline engine, air and fuel are mixed for the entire compression stroke, ensuring complete mixing even at higher engine speeds.

The second reason for the greater weight of a diesel engine is it must be stronger to withstand the higher combustion pressures needed for ignition, and the shock loading from the detonation of the ignition mixture. As a result, the reciprocating mass (the piston and connecting rod), and the resultant forces to accelerate and to decelerate these masses, are substantially higher the heavier, the bigger and the stronger the part, and the laws of diminishing returns of component strength, mass of component and inertia — all come into play to create a balance of offsets, of optimal mean power output, weight and durability.

Yet it is this same build quality that has allowed some enthusiasts to acquire significant power increases with turbocharged engines through fairly simple and inexpensive modifications. A gasoline engine of similar size cannot put out a comparable power increase without extensive alterations because the stock components would not be able to withstand the higher stresses placed upon them. Since a diesel engine is already built to withstand higher levels of stress, it makes an ideal candidate for performance tuning with little expense. However, it should be said that any modification that raises the amount of fuel and air put through a diesel engine will increase its operating temperature which will reduce its life and increase service requirements. These are issues with newer, lighter, high performance diesel engines which are not "overbuilt" to the degree of older engines and are being pushed to provide greater power in smaller engines.

The addition of a turbocharger or supercharger to the engine greatly assists in increasing fuel economy and power output, mitigating the fuel-air intake speed limit mentioned above for a given engine displacement. Boost pressures can be higher on diesels than gasoline engines, due to the latter's susceptibility to knock, and the higher compression ratio allows a diesel engine to be more efficient than a comparable spark ignition engine. Because the burned gases are expanded further in a diesel engine cylinder, the exhaust gas is cooler, meaning turbochargers require less cooling, and can be more reliable, than on spark-ignition engines.

The increased fuel economy of the diesel engine over the gasoline engine means that the diesel produces less carbon dioxide (CO2) per unit distance. Recently, advances in production and changes in the political climate have increased the availability and awareness of biodiesel, an alternative to petroleum-derived diesel fuel with a much lower net-sum emission of CO2, due to the absorption of CO2 by plants used to produce the fuel. Although concerns are now being raised as to the negative effect this is having on the world food supply, as the growing of crops specifically for biofuels takes up land that could be used for food crops and uses water that could be used by both humans and animals.

The two main factors that held diesel engine back in private vehicles until quite recently were their low power outputs and high noise levels, characterised by knock or clatter, especially at low speeds and when cold. This noise is caused by "piston slap", the sudden ignition of the diesel fuel when injected into the combustion chamber slamming the cold-contracted piston into the cylinder wall. The tolerances between the piston and cylinder wall are greater at cold temperatures to allow expansion at higher temperatures. A combination of improved mechanical technology (such as two-stage injectors which fire a short "pilot charge" of fuel into the cylinder to warm the combustion chamber before delivering the main fuel charge) and electronic control (which can adjust the timing and length of the injection process to optimize it for all speeds and temperatures) have partially mitigated these problems in the latest generation of common-rail designs. Poor power and narrow torque bands have been helped by the use of turbochargers and intercoolers.

Emissions

Diesel engines produce very little carbon monoxide as they burn the fuel in excess air even at full load, at which point the quantity of fuel injected per cycle is still about 50% lean of stoichiometric. However, they can produce black soot (or more specifically diesel particulate matter) from their exhaust, which consists of unburned carbon compounds. This is caused by local low temperatures where the fuel is not fully atomized. These local low temperatures occur at the cylinder walls and at the outside of big droplets of fuel. At these areas where it is relatively cold, the mixture is rich (contrary to the overall mixture which is lean). The rich mixture has less air to burn and some of the fuel turns into a carbon deposit.

The full load limit of a diesel engine in normal service is defined by the "black smoke limit", beyond which point the fuel cannot be completely combusted; as the "black smoke limit" is still considerably lean of stoichiometric it is possible to obtain more power by exceeding it, but the resultant inefficient combustion means that the extra power comes at the price of reduced combustion efficiency, high fuel consumption and dense clouds of smoke, so this is only done in specialized applications (such as tractor pulling competitions) where these disadvantages are of little concern.

Likewise, when starting from cold, the engine's combustion efficiency is reduced because the cold engine block draws heat out of the cylinder in the compression stroke. The result is that fuel is not combusted fully, resulting in blue/white smoke and lower power outputs until the engine has warmed through. This is especially the case with indirect injection engines, which are less thermally efficient. With electronic injection, the timing and length of the injection sequence can be altered to compensate for this. Older engines with mechanical injection can have manual control to alter the timing, or multi-phase electronically-controlled glow plugs, that stay on for a period after start-up to ensure clean combustion—the plugs are automatically switched to a lower power to prevent them burning out.

Particles of the size normally called PM10 (particles of 10 micrometers or smaller) have been implicated in health problems, especially in cities. Some modern diesel engines feature diesel particulate filters, which catch the black soot and when saturated are automatically regenerated by burning the particles. Other problems associated with the exhaust gases (nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides) can be mitigated with further investment and equipment; some diesel cars now have catalytic converters in the exhaust.

Power and torque

For commercial uses requiring towing, load carrying and other tractive tasks, diesel engines tend to have better torque characteristics. Diesel engines tend to have their torque peak quite low in their speed range (usually between 1600 – 2000 rpm for a small-capacity unit, lower for a larger engine used in a truck). This provides smoother control over heavy loads when starting from rest, and, crucially, allows the diesel engine to be given higher loads at low speeds than a petrol engine, making them much more economical for these applications. This characteristic is not so desirable in private cars, so most modern diesels used in such vehicles use electronic control, variable geometry turbochargers and shorter piston strokes to achieve a wider spread of torque over the engine's speed range, typically peaking at around 2500 – 3000 rpm.

Reliability

The lack of an electrical ignition system greatly improves the reliability. The high durability of a diesel engine is also due to its overbuilt nature (see above) as well as the diesel's combustion cycle, which creates less-violent changes in pressure when compared to a spark-ignition engine, a benefit that is magnified by the lower rotating speeds in diesels. Diesel fuel is a better lubricant than gasoline so is less harmful to the oil film on piston rings and cylinder bores; it is routine for diesel engines to cover 250,000 miles (400 000 km) or more without a rebuild.

Unfortunately, due to the greater compression force required and the increased weight of the stronger components, starting a diesel engine is a harder task. More torque is required to push the engine through compression.

Either an electrical starter or an air start system is used to start the engine turning. On large engines, pre-lubrication and slow turning of an engine, as well as heating, are required to minimize the amount of engine damage during initial start-up and running. Some smaller military diesels can be started with an explosive cartridge, called a Coffman starter, which provides the extra power required to get the machine turning. In the past, Caterpillar and John Deere used a small gasoline pony motor in their tractors to start the primary diesel motor. The pony motor heated the diesel to aid in ignition and utilized a small clutch and transmission to actually spin up the diesel engine. Even more unusual was an International Harvester design in which the diesel motor had its own carburetor and ignition system, and started on gasoline. Once warmed up, the operator moved two levers to switch the motor to diesel operation, and work could begin. These engines had very complex cylinder heads, with their own gasoline combustion chambers, and in general were vulnerable to expensive damage if special care was not taken (especially in letting the engine cool before turning it off).

As mentioned above, diesel engines tend to have more torque at lower engine speeds than gasoline engines. However, diesel engines tend to have a narrower power band than gasoline engines. Naturally-aspirated diesels tend to lack power and torque at the top of their speed range. This narrow band is a reason why a vehicle such as a truck may have a gearbox with as many as 18 or more gears, to allow the engine's power to be used effectively at all speeds. Turbochargers tend to improve power at high engine speeds; superchargers improve power at lower speeds; and variable geometry turbochargers improve the engine's performance equally by flattening the torque curve.

Quality and variety of fuels

Petrol/gasoline engines are limited in the variety and quality of the fuels they can burn. Older petrol engines fitted with a carburetor required a volatile fuel that would vaporize easily to create the necessary fuel/air mix for combustion. Because both air and fuel are admitted to the cylinder, if the compression ratio of the engine is too high or the fuel too volatile (with too low an octane rating), the fuel will ignite under compression, as in a diesel engine, before the piston reaches the top of its stroke. This pre-ignition causes a power loss and over time major damage to the piston and cylinder. The need for a fuel that is volatile enough to vaporize but not too volatile (to avoid pre-ignition) means that petrol engines will only run on a narrow range of fuels. There has been some success at dual-fuel engines that use gasoline/ethanol, gasoline/propane, and gasoline/methane.

In diesel engines, a mechanical injector system vaporizes the fuel into a pre-combustion chamber (as opposed to a Venturi jet in a carburetor, or a Fuel injector in a fuel injection system vaporizing fuel into the intake manifold or intake runners as in a petrol engine). This forced vaporisation means that less volatile fuels can be used. More crucially, because only air is inducted into the cylinder in a diesel engine, the compression ratio can be much higher as there is no risk of pre-ignition provided the injection process is accurately timed. This means that cylinder temperatures are much higher in a diesel engine than a petrol engine allowing less combustible fuels to be used.

Diesel fuel is a form of light fuel oil, very similar to kerosene, but diesel engines, especially older or simple designs that lack precision electronic injection systems, can run on a wide variety of other fuels. One of the most common alternatives is vegetable oil from a very wide variety of plants. Some engines can be run on vegetable oil without modification, and most others require fairly basic alterations. Biodiesel is a pure diesel-like fuel refined from vegetable oil and can be used in nearly all diesel engines. The only limits on the fuels used in diesel engines are the ability of the fuel to flow along the fuel lines and the ability of the fuel to lubricate the injector pump and injectors adequately. In general terms, inline mechanical injector pumps tolerate poor-quality or bio-fuels better than distributor-type pumps. Also, indirect injection engines generally run more satisfactorily on bio-fuels than direct injection engines. This is partly because an indirect injection engine has a much greater 'swirl' effect, improving vaporisation and combustion of fuel, and also because (in the case of vegetable oil-type fuels) lipid depositions can condense on the cylinder walls of a direct-injection engine if combustion temperatures are too low (such as starting the engine from cold).

A related historical note: at the request of the French Government the Otto company demonstrated a diesel engine at the 1900 Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) which used peanut oil. The French government were at the time exploring the possibility of using peanut oil as a locally produced fuel in their African colonies. Diesel himself later tested extensively the use of plant oils in his engine and began to actively promote the use of these fuels.

Most large marine diesels (often called cathedral engines due to their size) run on heavy fuel oil (sometimes called "bunker oil"), which is a thick, viscous and almost un-flammable fuel which is very safe to store and cheap to buy in bulk as it is a waste product from the petroleum refining industry. The fuel must be heated to thin it out (often by the exhaust header) and is often passed through multiple injection stages to vaporize it.



Fuel and fluid characteristics


Diesel engines can operate on a variety of different fuels, depending on configuration, though the eponymous diesel fuel derived from crude oil is most common. Good-quality diesel fuel can be synthesized from vegetable oil and alcohol. Biodiesel is growing in popularity since it can frequently be used in unmodified engines, though production remains limited. Recently, Biodiesel from coconut, which can produce a very promising coco methyl esther (CME), has characteristics which enhance lubricity and combustion giving a regular diesel engine without any modification more power, less particulate matter or black smoke, and smoother engine performance. The Philippines pioneers in the research on Coconut based CME with the help of German and American scientists. Petroleum-derived diesel is often called petrodiesel if there is need to distinguish the source of the fuel.

Pure plant oils are increasingly being used as a fuel for cars, trucks and remote combined heat and power generation especially in Germany where hundreds of decentralized small and medium sized oil presses cold press oilseed, mainly rapeseed, for fuel. There is a Deutsches Institut für Normung fuel standard for rapeseed oil fuel.


Residual fuels are the "dregs" of the distillation process and are a thicker, heavier oil, or oil with higher viscosity, which are so thick that they are not readily pumpable unless heated. Residual fuel oils are cheaper than clean, refined diesel oil, although they are dirtier. Their main considerations are for use in ships and very large generation sets, due to the cost of the large volume of fuel consumed, frequently amounting to many tons per hour. The poorly refined biofuels straight vegetable oil (SVO) and waste vegetable oil (WVO) can fall into this category. Moving beyond that, use of low-grade fuels can lead to serious maintenance problems. Most diesel engines that power ships like supertankers are built so that the engine can safely use low grade fuels.

Normal diesel fuel is more difficult to ignite than gasoline because of its higher flash point, but once burning, a diesel fire can be fierce.

Diesel applications

The worldwide usage of the diesel engine is highly dependent on local conditions and the specific application. Applications which require the diesel's reliability and high torque output (such as tractors, trucks, heavy equipment, most buses etc.) are found practically world-wide (obviously these applications also benefit from the diesel's improved fuel economy). Local conditions such as fuel prices play a big part in the acceptance of the diesel engine — for example, in Europe most tractors were diesel-powered by the end of the 1950s, whilst in the U.S. diesel did not dominate the market until the 1970s. Similarly, around half of all the cars sold in Europe (where fuel prices are high) are diesel-powered, while few North American private cars have diesel engines.

Besides their use in merchant ships and boats, there is also a naval advantage in the relative safety of diesel fuel, additional to improved range over a gasoline engine. The German "pocket battleships" were the largest diesel warships, but the German torpedo-boats known as E-boats (Schnellboot) of the Second World War were also diesel craft. Conventional submarines have used them since before the First World War. It was an advantage of American diesel-electric submarines that they operated a two-stroke cycle as opposed to the four-stroke cycle that other navies used.

Mercedes-Benz, cooperating with Robert Bosch GmbH, has had a successful run of diesel-powered passenger cars since 1936, sold in many parts of the World, with other manufacturers joining in the 1970s and 1980s. Other car manufacturers followed, Borgward in 1952, Fiat in 1953 and Peugeot in 1958.

In the United States, diesel is not as popular in passenger cars as in Europe. Such cars have been traditionally perceived as heavier, noisier, having performance characteristics which make them slower to accelerate, sootier, smellier, and of being more expensive than equivalent gasoline vehicles. From the late seventies to the mid-eighties, General Motors' Oldsmobile division produced a low-powered and unreliable V8 diesel engine which generally serves as the prime example for this reputation. Dodge with its ever-famous Cummins inline-six diesels optioned in pickup trucks (since 1989) really revitalized the appeal for diesel power in light vehicles among American consumers, but a superior and widely-accepted American regular-production diesel passenger car never materialized. Light and heavy trucks, in the U.S., have been diesel-optioned for years. After the introduction of ultra-low sulfur diesel, Mercedes-Benz has marketed passenger vehicles under the BlueTec banner. In addition, other manufacturers such as Ford, General Motors, Honda, Subaru, Audi, Volkswagen, BMW, and Nissan plan to sell Diesel vehicle in the US in 2008-2010, designed to meet the tougher emissions requirements in 2010. Recently, in early 2008, Honda has stated that they plan to offer their 50 state compliant 2.2 liter i-DTEC diesel engine in the new 2009 Acura TSX for the US market.

In Canada, Smart Fortwo was first introduced in 2004 with a diesel engine.

In Japan, newly registered Diesel vehicles were less than 1% in 2005. Honda and Mercedes-Benz have made plans to offer Diesel vehicles in the future, with Mercedes-Benz having already started selling the Mercedes-Benz E320 CDI in autumn 2006.

European governments tend to favor diesel engines in taxation policy because of diesel's superior fuel efficiency.

In Europe, where tax rates in many countries make diesel fuel much cheaper than gasoline, diesel vehicles are very popular (over half the new cars sold are powered by diesel engines) and newer designs have significantly narrowed differences between petrol and diesel vehicles in the areas mentioned. Often, among comparably designated models, the turbodiesels outperform their naturally aspirated gasoline-powered sister cars. One anecdote tells of Formula One driver Jenson Button, who was arrested while driving a diesel-powered BMW 330cd Coupé at 230 km/h (about 140 mph) in France, where he was too young to have a gasoline-engined car hired to him. Button dryly observed in subsequent interviews that he had actually done BMW a public relations service, as nobody had believed a diesel could be driven that fast. Yet, BMW had already won the 24 Hours Nürburgring overall in 1998 with a 3-series diesel. The BMW diesel lab in Steyr, Austria is led by Ferenc Anisits and develops innovative diesel engines.

Mercedes-Benz, offering diesel-powered passenger cars since 1936, has put the emphasis on high performance diesel cars in its newer ranges, as does Volkswagen with its brands. Citroën sells more cars with diesel engines than gasoline engines, as the French brands (also Peugeot) pioneered smoke-less HDI designs with filters. Even the Italian marque Alfa Romeo, known for design and successful history in racing, focuses on diesels that are also raced.

A few motorcycles have been built using diesel engines, but they have not been popular because of their reduced performance compared to gasoline engines. Diesel motorcycles do seem to be gaining in popularity recently, however, for their extremely high fuel efficiency; typically over 100 MPG.

Engine speeds

Within the diesel engine industry, engines are often categorized by their speeds into three unofficial groups:

High-speed engines

High-speed (approximately 2000 rpm and greater) engines are used to power trucks, buses, tractors, cars, yachts, compressors, pumps and small electrical generators.

Medium-speed engines

Large electrical generators are often driven by medium speed engines, (approximately 300 to 1800 rpm) which are optimized to run at a set synchronous speed depending on the generation frequency (50 or 60 Hertz) and provide a rapid response to load changes. Medium speed engines are also used for ship propulsion, and mechanical drive applications such as large compressors or pumps. The largest medium speed engines produced today (2007) have outputs up to approximately 22,400 kW (30,000)bhp). and are supplied by companies like MAN B&W, Wartsila, and Rolls-Royce (acquired Ulstein Bergen Diesel in 1999). Medium speed engines produced today are primarily four-stroke machines, however there are some two-stroke units still in production.



Slow-speed engines

The largest diesel engines are the slow-speed engines primarily used to power ships, although there are a few land-based power generation units as well. These extremely large two-stroke engines have power outputs up to 80 MW, operate in the range from approximately 60 to 200 rpm and are up to 15 m tall, and can weigh over 2000 tons. They typically run on cheap low-grade "heavy fuel", also known as "Bunker" fuel, which requires heating in the ship for tanking and before injection due to the fuel's high viscosity. The heat for fuel heating is often provided by waste heat recovery boilers located in the exhaust ducting of the engine, which produce the steam required for fuel heating.

Companies such as MAN B&W Diesel, (formerly Burmeister & Wain) and Wärtsilä (which acquired Sulzer Diesel) design such large low speed engines. They are unusually narrow and tall due to the addition of a crosshead bearing. Today (2007), the 14 cylinder Wärtsilä-Sulzer 14RTFLEX96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine built by Wärtsilä licensee Doosan in Korea is the most powerful diesel engine put into service, with a cylinder bore of 960 mm delivering 84.42 MW (114,800 bhp). It was put into service in September 2006, aboard the world's largest container ship Emma Maersk which belongs to the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group.


Unusual applications

Aircraft


The zeppelins Graf Zeppelin II and Hindenburg were propelled by "reversible" diesel engines. The direction of operation was changed by shifting gears on the camshaft. From full power forward, the engines could be brought to a stop, changed over, and brought to full power in reverse in less than 60 seconds.

Diesel engines were first tried in aircraft in the 1930s. A number of manufacturers built engines, the best known probably being the Packard air-cooled radial, and the Junkers Jumo 205, which was moderately successful, but proved unsuitable for combat use in WWII. Postwar, another interesting proposal was the complex Napier Nomad. In general, though, the lower power-to-weight ratio of diesels, particularly compared to kerosene-powered turboprop engines, has precluded their use in this application.

The very high cost of avgas in Europe, and the advances in automotive diesel technology have seen renewed interest in the concept. New, certified diesel-powered light planes are already available, and a number of other companies are also developing new engine and aircraft designs for the purpose. Many of these run on the readily-available jet fuel, or can run on either jet fuel or conventional automotive diesel. To gain the high power-to-weight ratio needed for an aero engine, these new "aero-diesels" are usually two-strokes and some, like the British "Dair" engine, use opposed-action pistons to gain further power.

Automobile racing

Although the weight and lower output of a diesel engine tend to keep them away from automotive racing applications, there are many diesels being raced in classes that call for them, mainly in truck racing and tractor pulling, as well in types of racing where these drawbacks are less severe, such as land speed record racing or endurance racing. Even diesel engined dragsters exist, despite the diesel's drawbacks of weight and low peak rpm, specifications central to performance in this sport.[8]

Historic

As early as 1931, Clessie Cummins installed his diesel in the Cummins "Diesel Special" race car, hitting 162 km/h (101 mph) at Daytona and 138 km/h (86 mph) at the Indianapolis 500 race,[9] where Dave Evans became the first driver to complete the Indianapolis 500 without making a single pit stop, completing the full distance on the lead lap and finishing 13th, relying on torque and fuel efficiency to overcome weight and low peak power.

In 1933, a 1925 Bentley with a Gardner 4LW engine was the first diesel-engine car to take part in the Monte Carlo Rally when it was driven by Lord Howard de Clifford. It was the leading British car and finished fifth overall.

In 1952, Fred Agabashian in a Cummins diesel won the pole at the Indianapolis 500 race with a turbocharged 6.6 liter diesel car, setting a record for pole position lap speed, 222.108 km/h or 138.010 mph. Don Cummins and his chief engineer Neve Reiners recognized that the low center of gravity of the flat engine configuration (designed to lie beneath the floor of a bus) plus the power advantage gained by the novel use of Elliott turbocharging would be a winning combination.

At the start, a slow pace lap (reportedly less than 80 mph) apparently induced what is now referred to as "turbo lag" and badly hampered the throttle response of the Cummins Diesel. Although Agabashian found himself in eighth place before reaching the first turn, he moved up to fifth in a few laps and was running competitively (albeit well back in the field after a tire change) until the badly situated air intake of the car swallowed enough debris from the track to disable the turbocharger at lap 71; he finished 27th.

Modern

When turbocharged diesel technology made progress in the 1990s and rule makers supported the concept, BMW and Volkswagen raced diesel touring cars, with BMW winning the 1998 24 Hours Nürburgring with a 320d against other factory-entered diesel competition of VW and about 200 normally powered cars, mainly by being able to drive very long stints. Alfa Romeo even organized a racing series with their Alfa Romeo 147 1.9 JTD models.

In 2006, a BMW 120d repeated a similar result, scoring 5th in a field of 220 cars, many of them much more powerful, a significantly stronger competition than in 1998. The VW Dakar Rally race Touareg for 2005 and 2006 are powered by their own line of TDI engines in order to challenge for the first overall diesel win there.

Meanwhile, the five time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Audi R8 race car was replaced by the Audi R10 in 2006, which is powered by a 650 hp (485 kW) and 1100 N·m (810 lbf·ft) V12 TDI common rail diesel engine, mated to a 5-speed gearbox, instead of the 6 used in the R8, to handle the extra torque produced. The gearbox is considered the main problem, as earlier attempts by others failed due to the lack of suitable transmissions that could stand the torque long enough.

After winning the 12 Hours of Sebring in 2006 with their diesel-powered R10, Audi obtained the overall win at the 2006 24 Hours of Le Mans, too. This is the first time a sports car could compete for overall victories with diesel fuel against cars powered with regular fuel or methanol and ethanol. However, the significance of this is slightly lessened by the fact that the ACO/ALMS race rules encourage the use of alternative fuels such as diesel.

Audi again triumphed at Sebring in 2007. It had both a speed and fuel economy advantage over the entire field including the Porsche RS Spyders, gasoline powered purpose-built race cars. Audi's diesels won again the 2007 24 Hours of Le Mans, against competition coming from the Peugot 908 diesel powered racer.

In 2006, the JCB Dieselmax broke the diesel land speed record posting an average speed of over 328 mph. The vehicle used "two diesel engines that have a combined total of 1,500 horsepower (1120 kilowatts). Each is a 4-cylinder, 4.4-liter engine used commercially in a backhoe loader." [15] [16]

In the 2008 BTCC (British Touring car Championship), Jason Plato and Darren Turner are racing factory sponsored SEAT Leon TDi with some success against a variety of gasoline powered competitors.

Motorcycles


With a traditionally poor power-to-weight ratio, diesel engines are generally unsuited to use in a motorcycle, which requires high power, low weight and rapid acceleration. However, in the 1980s NATO forces in Europe standardised all their vehicles to diesel power. Some had fleets of motorcycles, and so trials were conducted with diesel engines for these. Air-cooled single-cylinder engines built by Lombardini of Italy were used and had some success, achieving similar performance to petrol bikes and fuel economy of nearly 200 miles per gallon. This led to some countries re-fitting their bikes with diesel power.

Development by Cranfield University and California-based Hayes Diversified Technologies led to the production of a diesel powered off road motorbike based on the running gear of a Kawasaki KLR650 petrol-engine trail bike for military use. The engine of the diesel motorcycle is a liquid cooled, single cylinder four-stroke which displaces 584 cc and produces 21 kW (28 bhp) with a top speed of 85 mph (136 km/h). Hayes Diversified Technologies mooted, but has subsequently delayed, the delivery of a civilian version for approximately USD$19,000.

In 2005 the United States Marine Corps adopted the M1030M1, an off-road motorcycle based on the Kawasaki KLR650, and modified it with an engine designed to run on diesel or JP8 jet fuel. Since other U.S. tactical vehicles like the HMMWV utility vehicle and M1 Abrams tank use JP8, adopting a scout motorcycle which runs on the same fuels would ease logistics.

In India, motorcycles built by Royal Enfield Could be bought with 325 cc single-cylinder diesel engines.

Current and future developments

Already, many common rail and unit injection systems employ new injectors using stacked piezoelectric wafers in lieu of a solenoid, giving finer control of the injection event.

Variable geometry turbochargers have flexible vanes, which move and let more air into the engine depending on load. This technology increases both performance and fuel economy. Boost lag is reduced as turbo impeller inertia is compensated for.

Accelerometer pilot control (APC) uses an accelerometer to provide feedback on the engine's level of noise and vibration and thus instruct the ECU to inject the minimum amount of fuel that will produce quiet combustion and still provide the required power (especially while idling.)

The next generation of common rail diesels is expected to use variable injection geometry, which allows the amount of fuel injected to be varied over a wider range, and variable valve timing similar to that on gasoline engines.

Particularly in the United States, coming tougher emissions regulations present a considerable challenge to diesel engine manufacturers. Other methods to achieve even more efficient combustion, such as HCCI (homogeneous charge compression ignition) are being studied.

Diesel car history

The first production diesel cars were the Mercedes-Benz 260D and the Hanomag Rekord, both introduced in 1936. The Citroën Rosalie was also produced between 1935 and 1937 with an extremely rare diesel engine option (the 1766 cc 11UD engine) only in the Familiale (estate or station wagon) version.[18]

Following the 1970s oil crisis, turbodiesels were tested (e. g. by the Mercedes-Benz C111 experimental and record-setting vehicles). The first production turbo diesel car was, in 1978, the 3.0 5-cylinder 115 hp (86 kW) Mercedes 300 SD, available only in North America. In Europe, the Peugeot 604 with a 2.3 liter turbo diesel was introduced in 1979, and then the Mercedes 300 TD turbo.

Many Audi enthusiasts claim that the Audi 100 TDI was the first turbo charged direct injection diesel sold in 1989, but actually it isn't true, as the Fiat Croma TD-i.d. was sold with turbo direct injection in 1986 and two years later Austin Rover Montego. What was pioneering about the Audi 100, however, was the use of electronic control of the engine, as the Fiat and Austin had purely mechanically controlled injection. The electronic control of direct injection really made a difference in terms of emissions, refinement and power.

It's interesting to see that the big players in the diesel car market are the same ones who pioneered various developments (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Peugeot/Citroën, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Volkswagen Group), with the exception of Austin Rover, although Austin Rover's ancestor, the Rover Company had been building small-capacity diesel engines since 1956, when it introduced a 2051 cc 4-cylinder diesel engine for its Land Rover 4 × 4. In fact, the 1988 Austin-Rover unit was developed by Perkins Engines of Peterborough, who have designed and built high-speed diesels since the 1930s.

In 1997 first common rail diesel passenger car was introduced, the Alfa Romeo 156.

In 1998, for the very first time in the history of racing, in the legendary 24 Hours Nürburgring race, a diesel-powered car was the overall winner: the BMW works team 320d, a BMW E36 fitted with modern high-pressure diesel injection technology from Robert Bosch GmbH. The low fuel consumption and long range, allowing 4 hours of racing at once, made it a winner, as comparable petrol-powered cars spent more time refueling.

In Spring 2005, Mercedes-Benz unveiled a mass-produced aluminum block diesel engine for passenger vehicles and commercial use. While aluminum is traditionally considered of inferior strength and temperature resistance to withstand diesel applications, Mercedes engineers made extensive use of CAD/CAM design to arrive at an aluminum block that would meet with Mercedes' rigorous testing and reliability standards. First use was in 2006 model-year vehicles in the E-Class sedan and ML-class and GL-class SUVs. Similar in weight (208 kilograms (460 lb)) to the five-cylinder it replaced, and considerably lighter than the in-line six cylinder it also replaced, this 3.0L V-6 produces 165 kW (224 hp) at 3,800 rpm and max torque of 510 Nm (376 ft·lbf) at 1,600-2,800 rpm and makes use of a four-valve head. Additionally, fitment of Mercedes-Benz BlueTec system, a concert of emissions control strategies, renders this new diesel 50-state legal in the U.S. beginning in 2008 (stringent NOx limits have made U.S. passenger-car diesels unpopular or impossible in parts of the U.S. in recent years).

In 2006, the new Audi R10 TDI LMP1 entered by Joest Racing became the first diesel-engined car to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The winning car also bettered the post-1990 course configuration lap record by 1, at 380 laps. However, this fell short of the all-time distance record set in 1971 by over 200 kilometres (120 mi).

The Subaru car company of Japan is preparing to sell its station wagon version of their Legacy mid-size car (called the Subaru Outback in North America) with a new 2.0 liter, boxer engine format opposed-four cylinder diesel engine of 110 kW (147 hp) power, and 350 Nm (258 ft-lb) of torque, in the United Kingdom, with sales in continental Europe planned for 2009, and in the United States by 2010.


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