Talk:Internal combustion engine

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[edit] Definitions

Guys, I just made a big edit to the top of the page on the definition of an Internal Combustion Engine - before you make any edits read what I wrote carefully. It may look strange, but it's accurate, heat does all the work.
UrbanTerrorist
PS: I work in the industry.

Somebody had completely removed the definition of an internal combustion engine. Given this is an encyclopedia, we really do need to define what it is we are talking about I think.

I've given a reasonably formal definition, it doesn't read briliantly, but it is accurate.

I certainly don't mind people editing it, provided they don't make it less accurate.WolfKeeper 21:11, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Power units

Hi, Not sure if I'm using the 'talk' feature correctly, but I saw this in the page:

P = Tω where P is the engine's power in kilowatts, T is the engine's torque in Newton metres and ω is the speed of the engine in radians per second.

It says P is in kilowatts, but isn't the SI unit for power just Watts? P should be Newton * meters * radians / seconds , I'm too lazy to look up what that comes out to, but is it a possible mistake?

If T is in Newton*meter, and w is in rads/sec, then P is in Newton*meter/sec=Jules/sec=Watt

A kilowatt is 1000 watts. seano1 Jan 11th 2005, 3:24 PM

[edit] 1911

What's so special about 1911? -- stewacide 04:47, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, doesn't make a lot of sense. Wonder whether it refers to something later elided? It would seem that it was talking about the invention of the modern spark plug EXCEPT that way preceded 1911. --Morven 04:55, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It was the year that the edition of the Encycopedia Britannica which is cited in wikipedia was published. Maybe?

Ah! Then it's definitely something to remove, given we're not publishing in 1911! --Morven 07:43, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Actually it was the date of the book "Gas, Gasoline, and Oil-Engines including Producer-Gas Plants" by Gardner D. Hiscox, M.E., that I got the information from, not the Encycopedia Britannica. I wanted some sense of when each went obsolete, and that was all I had. The replacement is fine, although it would be nice to know when the mechanical system was abandoned (the book seemed to indicate that some older equipment still in use at the time might use it, but was unclear except that nothing being made at the time of publication did). -- RTC 22:26, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Renamed

Renamed to 'Internal combustion engine' to follow standard usage in English. It is MUCH rarer to find the dash. Google isn't an easy help with this since dashes are a space character in Google searches, but it's notable that of the top 40 or so results for such a search, the only ones with dashes are Wikipedia and its mirrors. —Morven 19:40, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)

am working on this assignment and am trying to find how vibration in an engine could affect it's life span. am expected to build a mathematical model.do u have an leads that can help.

[edit] Graph Colours

Hi,

   could the colours on the graph at the bottom of the page be changed? it's rather hard to distinguish the lines.

[edit] Efficiency

I had a little trouble with the following statement and I removed it (Sep. 9 2004). I'm not sure of its accuracy. Heat, energy (kinetic, potential, chemical), efficiency an work are all tricky, so I may just misunderstand the statement.

"An ideal, 100% efficient engine would run and remain at ambient temperature and convert all the energy in the fuel to kinetic energy - not into heat."

The statement which preceded it (heat in the cooling system is waste) is accurate and sufficient (if not comprehesive).

Mechanical efficiency in an engine is defined as the indicated mean effective pressure over the mean brake effective pressure. The lack of efficiency comes from friction.

That's not correct. *A* source of inefficiency is friction- but the combustion creates heat, and that heat cannot be converted 100% into work- the Carnot efficiency cannot be improved upon. The Carnot efficiency depends on the highest combustion temperature reached and the temperature the exhaust/radiator reach. It cannot be improved upon; otherwise a perpetual motion machine can be made.

Describing efficiency from checmical to work is difficult and the assumptions need to be clear. For a example, the statement that I removed does not say anything about the temperature of the gas coming out of the engine. It could be cooler than ambient.

No, it can't. Well, not unless you are heating the air through a radiator- the heat has to go somewhere.

Thus, the engine could be tranfering heat from the gas to the engine block during combustion, but expansion cools the gas below ambient.

That would *take* energy. Where are you going to get the energy to do that?

The work could be the same as the claimed 'ideal' engine, but, there would be some energy transfered to heat. Or, you could be more than 100% efficient.

No, that's a perpetual motion machine! That's not physically possible! Many, many, many, many... people have tried. All have failed.

Also, kinetic energy of a gas is sensible as temperature. See the "Heat as kinetic energy" section of the kinetic energy entry. So, to which kinetic energy does the statement refer, gas, shaft, car?

The reactant gases have both chemical and sensible energy - since a chemical conversion occurs during combustion, the same sensible energy of the products may occur at a different temperature than the reactants.

See also carnot cycle and fuel efficiency.

[edit] Fuel systems?

Seems to me this article is missing any discussion of carburettors, turbochargers, superchargers, fuel injection and so forth. There's no fuel going into our ICs! WolfKeeper

[edit] Pollution

The pollution section mostly only deals with pollution generated directly by the engine, but also mentions CO2 emissions in the production of H2. Should other emissions in the production and disposal of engines, fuels, lubricants, radiator coolants, etc be mentioned? Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 03:42, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Definately. I'm going to try and get at that sometime soon - should mention that I work in emissions control, design and sell catalytic converters for a living. UrbanTerrorist 02:33, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

On second thought, information on those emissions belongs in other articles. I moved the hydrogen information to Hydrogen economy. Brian Jason Drake 11:34, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Removed text

A Quasiturbine has a four face articulated rotor that rotates inside a quasi-oval shaped chamber, as with the wankel the four phases take place in separate locations but differs in that a complete revolution of the output shaft is a complete four stroke cycle.

It may well have these, if it's ever built. It's just an idea at present, and doesn't belong in this article. Andrewa 11:12, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Carbon dioxide - fossil fuel vs biomass

According to the article, fossil fuels result in a net CO₂ emission, but biomass doesn't, because when the biomass was growing it absorbed at least as much CO₂.

But don't those fossil fuels come partly from plants that absorbed CO₂ while growing, so that although there is still a net emission (some fossil fuels come from animals) there is a signifcant reduction in the net emission? Brian Jason Drake 11:33, 8 November 2005 (UTC) [edited Brian Jason Drake 11:40, 10 November 2005 (UTC)]

It doesn't matter, if fossil fuels come from animals or plants. The use of biomass fuel has a closed CO2 circle, but burning fossil fuels not: Fossil fuel was created by biomass (plants, animals) that was buried by sediments and then transformed to lime, coal, oil or gas (this is the most accepted theorie). This is probably also happening right now, but at a much, much slower rate than we burn fossil fuel. Unless we reduce our consumption to the rate of production, there's a positive net CO2 emission. - Alureiter 12:51, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

The article implies that the only reason there is no net CO₂ production is that the same plants, when they were growing before, absorbed the CO₂, i.e. there is no CO₂ production in the long run. I don't see how fossil fuels from plants have a net emission in the long run, but I can see how fossil fuels from animals have a net emission in the long run. Brian Jason Drake 11:40, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, if a plant grows, it absorbs CO2 and builds biomass. If you burn that plant (or eat it or it rots, which means its eaten by smaller animals and fungi), all the CO2 goes back to the athmosphere, no change in CO2 levels by this. Therefore, if you cultivate plants and use them as fuel you have a net CO2 production of exactly 0. The first part is important, since it makes the process a circle.

If a plant is buried and can't rot and becomes coal, there was a CO2 reduction. This has happend millions of years ago. Ok, you can now say, on a term of 1 billion years and after we've burnt up all the fossil fuels, there was net CO2 production of 0 by this prozess (there are others as well). But even in the long run of human mankind (a few 100,000 years) this is not true, and of course not of our generation now. That would be like saying, if your father was a millionaire and you spend the money you inherited from him without earning anything you have a net spending of zero because all the money you spend had been earned by someone else before. There's no closed circle, that's the problem.

And now for animals: It really doesn't matter, if the plant is buried or eaten by an animal and the animal than buried and turned into fossil fuels. If an animal dies and rots, it returns all the CO2 that was absorbed from the atmosphere by creating its biomass from eaten plants (or animals that have eaten animals that have eaten animals... that have eaten plants) to the atmosphere. If it can't rot, there was a CO2 reduction. - Alureiter 12:49, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Angular moving piston

Hello. I've heard of a motorcycle engine where the pistons moves in angular motion (rather than straight motion), because their heads are fixed to a side shaft. This is supposed to produced less friction with the chamber, and low temperatures.

I think an article or at least an hyperlink to this subject would enrich Wikipedia.

This can be done. --Excaliburo 14:43, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merging Articles - Internal Combustion Engine & Car Engine

They definitely should be merged, a "Car Engine" is a subset of the Internal Combustion Engine. Possibly we should check the listing for automobile as well, and see what is listed there under engines.
UrbanTerrorist 02:25, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so. They are the most important examples of each-other, but there have been electric and steam cars and many other uses of internal combustion engines. The first IC engines were used as we now use electric motors. There are motorcycles, airplanes (not so much any more), airships and blimps, models, water pumps, ships and boats (including submarines), maybe torpedoes, electric generators, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, farm machinery, hedge trimmers, tanks and other military ground vehicles. David R. Ingham 05:33, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I don;t think so too. As states they are the most important. It is better to have a separate article. There is a lot of information so it isn't good to merge it with another article. Elfalem 01:49, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Technically electric cars have motors, not engines. Steam cars do have engines of course, however they are external combustion. BTW, I was for making "Internal Combustion Engine" the main page, and deleting "Car Engine" UrbanTerrorist 02:37, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I disagree on the idea of a merge. In the near furture we will begin to see different types of engines used in cars, such as the fuel cell. Soon the internal combustion engine will not be the only method of powering an automobile.

I say 'car engine' just be a page with options to click on different types.

OK, where to start. 1) A fuel cell is not an engine. 2) An electric motor is not an engine. 3) While a Steam engine is an engine, it should be listed under External Combustion Engine Yes, there are many uses of [[Internal Combustion Engine}}s beyond automobiles, however all internal combustion engines no matter what they are used in have common characteristics, and should be considered the same. UrbanTerrorist 23:55, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cylinders

I've made a tentative change to the number of cylinders used in an engine as being "up to 30". I say "tentative" as this is based on the Chrysler petrol engine as used by the Sherman tank (nicknamed the "egg beater", I believe), which I guess may be a controversial choice depending on whether one views it as being one five-bank engine or five straight-six lorry engines bolted together!

[edit] edit war

We seem to have an insistant non-contributor or possible two. David R. Ingham 03:52, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Interesting Observations

Very nice article with lots of information. Whomever owns this article may want to incorporate these two bits of info.

The animated graphic of the cycle demo is really neat, however every automobile engine I've seen rotates clockwise when looking at the front of the engine. This immediately caught my eye as odd from someone who has worked on engines for 30 years. I suppose it could be the 2nd engine in a pair of contra rotating marine engines.
Believe it or not, maximum brake torque occurs when combustion pressure peaks at 12-14 degrees after top dead center, not the 90 degrees stated. At 90 degrees ATDC, the effective chamber volume is increasing too quickly for the gas expansion to have maximum mechanical effect. 90 degrees ATDC is certainly when the crank is in the most advantageous position, but burning that late just wastes the heat energy out the exhaust instead of producing crank torque. A crude analogy is to imagine riding a bicycle, but waiting for the pedal arm to be at 90 degrees before pushing.

[edit] Massive yet Tiny

I have been sent a reference to the "massive yet tiny" engine. Does anyone here know anything about how bogus this is? --Slashme 09:55, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've done some googling on the topic. See Toroidal engine. --Slashme 09:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Note that this looks like a scam - the claims are somewhat grandoise, and he is happy about being featured in American Antigravity Magazine? I'd be very skeptical about this. UrbanTerrorist 02:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Charge

I was working on disambig projects and came across a link to charge in the section here. Since charge is a disambig page, I needed to change it, but there was no article on that type of charge. So, I created Charge (engine) and linked to that. If anyone has any issues, please respond. Aguerriero (talk) 18:55, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fuel efficiency figures?

Hi. I’m completely unfamiliar with this article but would like to add this request. It would be helpful if the article could quantify the effiency of a typical contemporary internal combustion engine in use. I say this because in the solar power article an editor wants to compare the efficiency of battery-powered vehicles to those powered by ICEs. He cites this reference [1] for the ICE efficiency. However, this is just teaching material from one university course. I’m sure that contributors here must have access to more encylopedic sources for such figures. And efficiency figures could be useful to many encylopedia users for various reasons, not just for comparison with battery-powered vehicles. I looked at the Fuel efficiency article (which you currently don’t link to) but did not find anything like the percentage figures that the above webpage uses. Itsmejudith 09:43, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] image

This is one of my recent uploads Image:Avondale ag museum gnangarra 09.jpg it may be of use to the article Gnangarra 06:36, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] question about compression ratios

I have a question:

When you press on the accelerator pedal of a petrol engine, you open the throttle and allow more fuel/air mixture to enter each cylinder. Therefor the harder the acclerator is pushed, the more volume enters the cylinder; and thus the compression is increased, yes?

The average compression ratio of a petrol engine is about 10, but is that at full throttle. Is the compression much less when the engine is idling?

On the other hand a diesel engine is only controlled by how much fuel is injected , so the compression ratio is always about 20.

However it gets much more confusing when a turbo is added =(

[edit] Requests for Citations in History Section

OK - so we have this Wonderfull history section - but guess what - no facts to back it up. Numerous assertions of patents granted, but no Patent number, jurisdiction the patent was granted in, or link to the patent on the web. Several inventors are mentioned who I've never heard of (not that I'm claiming to be an expert on inventors), with no information about them other than they did something in this year, and not a lot of detail on that.

We need to buld up this section - and possible consider hiving it off into several parts, where there's enough information. Possibly the history section should have it's own page - the history of the ICE is a fascinating thing. UrbanTerrorist 01:57, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hydrogen

I was surprised to see this text: "Some can run on Hydrogen; however, this can be dangerous." This is clearly a statement of opinion and has no citations to back it up. The same statements could be made about racing fuels that often burn colorless. And, this statement could be made about gasoline: "Some can run on gasoline; however, this can be dangerous. Plumbing of gasoline around hot engines can lead to leaks and fires." Any flamable substance can be dangerous if it leaks. --68.77.111.88 01:38, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Hydrogen is actually safer than gasoline since it so easily escapes to the upper atmosphere, whereas gasoline vapors can creep along the ground, being denser than air. Hu 03:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe that there should be any text on the safety of the various fuels in this article. It is supposed to be about the engines, not the fuels. Mentioning (with links) the use of autogas (LPG), gasoline (petrol), hydrogen, natural gas and anything else as fuels used in internal combustion engines is about all that belongs in this article. If someone wants to read about the various fuels, they should follow the links to read about them in separate articles. The safety or otherwise of hydrogen versus petrol is not relevant to this article. --Athol Mullen 05:59, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Indeed Hydrogen fuel is not relevant here because the more efficient (commercially viable) Hydrogen engines are fuel cells and not internal combustion. Ion Negru 21:21, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

It is a factual statement to say that internal combustion engines can run on hydrogen. BMW have been running prototypes on hydrogen for years. Facts are what an encyclopedia is about. As above, I believe that a simple list of fuels that can be used belongs in this article. I also believe that factual information such as hydrogen embrittlement of metals requiring different metallury to that found in most engines might be appropriate here but certainly not any form of scaremongering POV or technically incorrect statements. --Athol Mullen 21:52, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

sorry I meant the scare stories about hydrogen safety since as a fuel it works most efficiently in fuel cells which does not burn it. Ion Negru 05:35, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History

I restored the history section, which had been deleted several days ago by a vandal. Between now and then, there have been several vandalizations of that same area and no one reverting them noticed that the history was missing. Please keep an eye on this. --Tysto 00:23, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I think Wikipedia's entered the stage where most organizations fail, where the strutcture that worked well when it was a small bunch of dedicated and reliable individuals can't cope with the maintenance required of a big organization where the average contributor is, by definition, average, and half of them are below average, and you have to alter the structure of the organization to carry the weight formerly carried by the individuals or collapse. Well, it was fun for a while. Gzuckier 16:22, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] James Atkinson

The James Atkinson referred to in the article is cross referenced/linked to a different James Atkinson.216.198.74.114 15:28, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

"James Atkinson (inventor), inventor of the Single-Stroke combustion engine in 1882". There is apparently no article on him yet. James Atkinson leads to a disambiguation page, which for now is the only thing we have on him. --Van helsing 15:47, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

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