Internal Vs External Combustion Engines

Internal vs external combustion engines
21/03/2013
March 20, 2013, 08:28:22 pm
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The Steampunk Forum at Brass Goggles > General Steampunk > Metaphysical (Moderator: S.Sprocket) > Internal vs external
combustion engines
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mooglesrcute
Deck Hand
United States
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Topic: Internal vs external combustion engines (Read 3023 times)

on: Septem ber 23, 2011, 05:11:35 am
Steam engines were external combustion engines, right?

Motors that run on gasoline are internal combustion engines, correct?
I've been reading on wikipedia for 30 minutes, but don't really understand the basic structure of both.
And why did the internal combustion engine transcend steam power?
Also, steam power sounds incredible clean (not an engineer here) has there been any movement to
return to steam power for the sake of being green!?
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mark V
Snr. O fficer
England
where's the firing

shovel
Re: Internal vs external combustion engines

Reply #1 on: Septem ber 23, 2011, 06:26:57 am
The difference between internal and external combustion is mainly to do with the efficiency of the
conversion of fuel to usable power rather than the fuel used. coal can be used in internal combustion
(coal dust mixed with air makes a suitably explosive mix) as petrol(gasoline) can be used on a steam
engine, it's just a matter of how it is burnt and what you want to power with it, how many staff you
need to keep it going and the maintenance requirements ( cleaning, oiling, refuelling, polishing the
brass-work. so if you add thermal efficiency to your search it may make more sense . M
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Narsil
Rogue therlord

United Kingdom
Basically all engines commonly used today are heat engines (the major exception being electric motors).
In essence they use a particular cycle of heating, compressing and expanding a gas to turn heat
energy into useful mechanical power.
There are various different cycles, depending on how you go about this Otto (gasoline and other spark
ignition IC engines, diesel, and Rankin used in steam turbines).
The primary difference between external and internal combustion s that with internal combustion the
working fluid is the combustion gasses produced by burning the fuel, these combustion gases do work
directly on a piston. In a steam engine steam is the working fluid which does the work and is heated
externally, the burning fuel never comes into direct contact with teh working fluid.
The practical implications of the are that IC engines require very high quality, clean burning fuel,
something like gasoline or alcohol simply because it is burning inside the working parts of the engine and
anything which produced ash or other solid combustion products would cause huge problems. Its also
important that the fuel burns in an even and predictable way since it has to generate its heat in a
confined space in a very short period of time.
The principal advantage of IC engines is that they have high power density, or to put it another way
you can get a lot of power out of a relatively small and light package. largely because you don't need
to have separate boilers, condensers, water supply etc etc.
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Steam engines can be a lot more efficient but they need to be big to do it, this makes them ideal for
static power generation (almost all modern power stations are based on steam turbines), they also tend
to require a lot of maintenance and take a long time to start.
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Arceye
Zeppelin O verlord
United Kingdom
I love hum anity, it's

people I can't stand!

Concerning use in vehicles, there was a time around 1910, when nobody could be sure that the future
was petrol, or steam. Then the self starter was invented, and the petrol engine took over, once it did
not need cranking over by hand, virtually anyone could handle a petrol engine.
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bicyclebuilder
Zeppelin O verlord
Netherlands

A picture is a thousand words, and a movie is a thousand pictures.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
IC engine.
A.K.A. Scanner
Cam era Builder
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Steam engine (explaination starts at 1:00)
Both engines have many variations but basically work that way.
A IC engine:
takes in fuel (gas or a mixture of air and liquid fuel),
compresses the gas,
ignites the fuel followed by an internal explosion (combustion),
turns the explosion into movement and blows out the burned gas.
A Steam engine:
burns fuel outside the engine, making water boil.
Steam is expanded water and without room to expand to, builds up pressure. The only way to expand
to is through a series of pipes and valves to the mechanical parts.
the mechanical parts (a piston or turbine) turns steam into movement.
why did the internal combustion engine transcend steam power?
You need a lot to haul along when you use a steam engine in a vehicle. Boiler, heater, fuel, pipe lines.
It's not efficient as a vehicle. An IC engine burns it's fuel more efficient, weight power ratio wise.
A steam engine works wonderfull statuary and at a steady speed, so as a big power station it's perfect.
Even nuclear power stations have steam engines. The nuclear reaction generates heat, making water
boil and powers a steam engine.
Something that's true for both types of engine (Internal or steam): turbine engines are more efficient
than piston engines. A turbine keeps making a rotating movement, but a piston engine looses power
due to reversing direction every stroke.
I think all of us replying here can talk for hours about this subject. I hope we can teach you a bit about
engines.
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akumabito
Im m ortal
Netherlands

As for steam engines being greener: No, not really. You still need to burn fuel to generate heat. Coal,
the typical fuel for steam engines actually burns with rather nasty by-products. In fact, the industrial
cities of the 19th century were legendary for being overed in a layer of soot.. With modern tech, and
using cleaner, liquid fuels, they can be cleaned up significantly, but the size and weight limitations
pretty much remain. The engine itself can be faily lightweight and powerful. Especially in the case of
stem turbines. The accesorries to make it all work however, are rather bulky and heavy..
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lilibat
Rogue therlord
United States

Nuclear power plants are basically steam power. They just use the heat from decaying radioactive
material rather than heat from burning coal.
The only really green steam power comes from using the heat of the sun to boil the water for steam
turbines or geothermal.
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Angus A Fitziron
Zeppelin O verlord
United Kingdom
Research Air Ship
R.A.S. 'Saorsa'

Reply #7 on: Septem ber 23, 2011, 02:12:41 pm
I found an interesting article about this the other day, concerning early motor sport in France. The first
automobile race was probably the Paris - Rouen Trial in 1894, organised by a newspaper Le Petit
Journal. Technically, it was not the first race to be organised as in 1887 another paper Le Vlocipde
had proposed a time trial within Paris but only one competitor turned up! However, the Paris Rouen trial
had 102 entries and of the 21 actual starters only 4 failed to complete the trial and they were all steam
cars. The fastest was a De Dion steam tractor, followed by two Peugeot petrol engined vehicles. The
De Dion was disqualified as it required 2 people to attend the vehicle - thus explaining one of the issues
with external combustion - the stoker - unless you use a liquid or gas burner.
The next race was Paris to Bordeaux and back to Paris, a distance of 732 miles! Vehicles had to be able
to carry at least two passengers "to avoid charges that the organisers were encouraging speeding"!
There were 46 cars entered and of these 22 started - 15 with petrol engines, 6 steam and one electric,
with the first 8 cars home being powered by petrol internal combustion engines, beginning to
demonstrate the efficiency of the IC engine for small, fast vehicles. In 1896, the Paris - Marseilles Paris race attracted 23 cars, of which only two were steam powered, for the 1063 mile event. Severe
storms affected the race and only 16 vehicles arrived at Marseille, but 14 of those managed to get
back to Paris. Both steam cars retired.
However, in 1897, the big race of the year was Marseille - Nice - La Turbie, which although only 145
miles long had some very steep hills and sharp bends. These must have suited the steam cars as the
event was won by the Compte de Chasseloup-Laubat, in an 18hp De Dion steam brake. De Dions were
the only steam cars competing at the time and in 1899, even they turned production over to internal
combustion engine powered cars so must have realised that the rapid development of the IC engine had
overtaken external combustion for this kind of application.
Of course, in the first couple of decades of the 20thC, Stanley and White steam cars competed in the
US but from what I can see were only really successful in outright speed attempts or in hill climbs
where they still had a power and more importantly torque advantage over the internal combustion
engine.
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The main thing to keep in mind is that all of these engines run on heat, and heat flows from hot things
to cold things. The greater the temperature difference, in general, the more efficiently things will run,
and the more power that can be extracted for a given amount of engine.
Basic maximum efficiencies can be calculated for any heat engine (look up Carnot efficiency for a
typical and widely used calculation), and you never get anywhere near 100% efficient conversion of
available heat energy into motion. Typical modern internal combustion engines are doing well to be in
the low thirty-odd percent range. Steam engines are typically much lower, since there are so many
irreversible and lossy processes involved: combustion losses, boiler losses, loss due to piping, losses in
the cylinders, and so forth.
Steam engine efficiencies can be improved by superheating the steam, by insulating the entire steam
path, by adding condensers at the exhaust end, by preheating boiler feed water with a heat exchanger
at the exhaust, by multi-stage expansion (three-stage cylinders, as in some ships, or multiple turbine
steps), and other means.
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21/03/2013
There are also other heat engines which do not use internal combustion, such as the family usually
classed as Stirling-cycle engines. These can be hugely efficient, at least in theory, and have some
advantages in practical terms, since they are sealed from the outside. There are solar electric power
farms which use Stirling engines and parabolic reflectors on heliostatic mounts, rather than
photovoltaics. There are also some proposals to tap geothermal energy from hot deep-well brines or
other sources with Stirling-type systems, since they can run on just the heat, without requiring steam
or other heated vapor the way turbine systems do.
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Vorpal
Bandersnatch

Snr. O fficer
United States
The cool thing about external combustion engines (which has already been hinted at) is that you can
use almost anything to fuel them - basically just supply heat to part of the engine and it will crank
happily away.
My external combustion engine of choice is the Stirling engine (not steam, I know, I know) because it
really is that simple - any heat differential can be utilized, even if you are going from kind of cold to
really cold, etc. Another advantage of Stirling engines (besides flexibility of fuel source) is that they are
completely contained - maintenance is minimal, lubrication can last for a really long time, and you rarely
have to crack the thing open, whereas you've got air and fuel and all sorts of other messy stuff up in
your internals with an ICE.
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treason to the race, and ex ile from God.[W ells]
Narsil
Rogue therlord

United Kingdom
There have also been various proposals for hybrid IC/steam engines. The simplest approach involves
injecting water into the cylinder of a 4 stroke engine, either as part of the normal cycle or adding an
extra expansion-exhaust cycle to make it 6 stroke.
This does have the potential, on paper to get an lot more useful work out of the same amount of fuel,
however there tend to be quite a few practical problems. The most serious is that getting water in the
pistons of an IC engine is normally something that you avoid at all costs since it tends to destroy
conventional lubricants and the thermal shock puts a lot of mechanical strain on components which are
already highly stressed. The other issue is that you either have to carry and replenish a supply of water
or extract, condense and clean the waste steam from the exhaust, this is by no means impossible but
adds considerable extra weight and complexity which is going to eat into your original efficiency gains.
As engine and power technology stands at the moment the various different types have evolved to fit
a particular 'niche' which best exploits the particular advantages of each cycle. Because of this it's
difficult to make direct comparisons as to which is 'best' because you're comparing apples with oranges.
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mark V
Snr. O fficer
England

There is always the option of using a water vapour/hydroxy mix on an i/c engine but this does need
rather excessive timing adjustment on a spark ignition engine M
where's the firing

shovel
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Arceye
Zeppelin O verlord
United Kingdom
I love hum anity, it's

people I can't stand!

Otto cycle IC engines: tolerably efficient, don't take a masters degree in engineering to run.
Steam engine: reciprocating: inefficient, old fashioned, but fun. Use any fuel to raise steam.
Stirling Engine: theoretically efficient, but inflexible. Anybody can make a simple Stirling, but getting
useful work out is another matter.
Steam or Gas Turbines: very efficient, probably the highest available in practical terms, but not flexible.
You pays yer money, you takes yer choice. Possibly the Diesel engine is the best we have in terms of
efficiency and flexibility.
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March 20, 2013, 08:28:22 pm

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Topic: Internal vs external combustion engines (Read 3023 times)