History of Internal Combustion Engines

The video that motivated this posting has been deleted from YouTube. Fortunately, a timeline of the development of heat (including diesel) engines references a video by Shell describing the history of the diesel engine that you can download to view (88 mb). The video also describes the four heat engines used before diesel: steam at 6% efficiency, hot-bulb oil at 10%, gas (manufactured from coal) at 17%, and gasoline at 12%. Diesel wrote a paper on the design in 1892. But he learned that with his first prototype in 1893 that it was hard to force fuel into the compressed air. That prototype was like today's fusion reactors, it never ran on its own power. In 1894 he learned how to use compressed air to force fuel into the cylinder. By 1897, he had a prototype that ran on its own with an efficiency of 27%. The video does not explain who financed the development of successive prototypes. By 1900, single cylinder engines where in production, but they ran at less than 200 rpm. The manufactures of the engines licensed Diesel's patents. Electric generation drove the development of higher horsepower engines. By 1912, the first ocean-going diesel ship had been built. Today [1942], 1 ship in every 4 is diesel driven. By the 1940s, the 2-stroke version had also been developed. Compressed air injection is what limited the rpm of an engine. It took over 10 years to perfect direct injection, but by WWII medium speed engines for locomotives and high speed engines for trucks, busses, tractors, etc. had been developed.

1904 - Machinefabrik Ausgburg-Nurember aka MAN from DieselDuck

1912 The Diesel patent expires in the US. New companies spring up to build their versions of the engine. Allis-Chalmers and Nordberg in Milwaukee, Fairbanks-Morse in Beloit and Worthington Cudahy - all in Wisconsin, heart of the dairy states, a popular place for German immigrants. As well Busch-Sulzer set up shop in St Louis, and Winton in Cleveland. [DieselDuck]

1913 - A worker poses for this picture, from the MAN factory in Nurnberg, Germany from DieselDuck

GM developed their two-cycle design in time to build two 600hp prototypes, Winton Model 201, for the 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago to generate electricity for their demonstration Chevy assembly line.

Screenshot

Lightened Nations posted

The first Sulzer diesel engine was built in 1898 in collaboration with Rudolf Diesel, marking a significant milestone in engine technology. This engine had an output of 20 horsepower and operated at 160 revolutions per minute. Rudolf Diesel, the inventor of the diesel engine, partnered with Sulzer to develop this innovative engine, which eventually replaced the steam engines that were dominant at the time.

Sulzer, a company founded in 1834 in Winterthur, Switzerland, by Johann Jakob Sulzer, had already established itself in various engineering fields, including cast iron production, firefighting pumps, and textile machinery. The collaboration with Diesel marked Sulzer's entry into the diesel engine market, which would become a major part of their business. By 1898, the first Sulzer-built diesel engine ran on a test bed in Winterthur, demonstrating the practical application of Diesel's concepts.

This early engine was significant not only for its technical specifications but also for its impact on the transition from steam to diesel power. Sulzer's engines gained a reputation for efficiency and reliability, which led to their widespread adoption in various industries, including maritime, rail, and stationary power plants.

In the decades following this initial development, Sulzer continued to innovate in diesel engine technology, contributing to advancements in marine and locomotive diesel engines. They eventually sold their diesel engine business to Wärtsilä in 1997, but their legacy in diesel engineering remains notable in the history of industrial technology.

This collaboration and the resulting engine played a pivotal role in the broader adoption and advancement of diesel technology, setting the stage for further developments in internal combustion engines throughout the 20th century.

The Illinois Railway Museum has preserved one of these diesels.

20150627 2163

Illinois Central Railroad Scrapbook posted

Illinois Central's first streamlined passenger train was the five car "Green Diamond", delivered in 1936 and initially assigned to run between Chicago and St. Louis. The engine and electrical gear were supplied by the newly formed Electro-Motive Corporation, while Pullman assembled the entire five car train. In 1947 new cars and locomotives were assigned to the Chicago - St. Louis run. The trainset was refurbished and reassigned to run between Jackson, Miss., and New Orleans as the "Miss - Lou".

By 1950 the trainset was worn out and obsolete. The trainset was moved to IC's Burnside Shops at 95th Street south of Chicago, where it was scrapped. Most of the carbody has been stripped away from power car 121, revealing the 16 cylinder Winton 201A engine, which produced 1,200 horsepower. Winton engines are frequently referred to as diesel engines, but they actually are distillate engines. Several variations of the Winton engine were built, and more info can be found at the link below. The design of the Winton engine dates back to the 1920's, and over the years the size and power of the engines was increased. However, by the mid-1930's the Winton had reached the limits of its design, and EMC turned to the 567 engine, which became a resounding success.

R.W. Ballard photo, Cliff Downey collection.

https://utahrails.net/loconotes/pcook-winton.php

Ted Gregory shared
Here is a brief history on the prime mover that started it all for GE.
It has been in production since 1956.
Last US 7FDL was built in 2004, after which the Tier 2 GEVO was put in production.
7FDL continues in production for Export models.

(new window)  The first part of this video is farm history. The internal combustion history starts at 8:38. As I expected, they don't mention that Navistar spent $250m trying to make EGR work to meet Tier 4 pollution requirements. They failed to meet the Jan 1, 2014, [ForConstructionPros] deadline and had to switch to Cummins engines for their trucks. And they got sued by the Security Exchange Commission for misleading their shareholders concerning their progress towards the Tier 4 deadline. I noticed that this video was made before 2015 because that is when it was uploaded. At 37:28 the spokesperson talks about 2010 being in the future. He was correct that the diesel engine was going to be cleaner. Unfortunately for Navistar, it wasn't their engines.  Their engine plant in Melrose Park, IL, no longer makes engines. Since this video was made, Volkswagen cheating on their diesel emission test has been exposed. GE was able to meet the Tier 4 deadline for train locomotives, but Progress Rail/EMD wasn't. They have now sold some Tier 4 locomotives. But I've seen reports that the railroads put them in storage because they kept breaking down.

The EPA ignored the smoke coming out of diesel engines for years because rain washed the particles out of the atmosphere. But then they decided the particles and the NOx emissions were bad and defined the Tiers of reduction so that they would be really low by 2014. Particulate emissions were gone by Tier 3. It was the NOx reductions that threatened to bankrupt companies. I still wonder if Tier 3 would be good enough. Going back to Tier 3 still makes sense because all Tier 4 engines are complicated (expensive and a maintenance headache).



They use a regular sized engine to compress air in a tank. Then they use the compressed air to start  Big Bertha, which runs on propane. (I wonder how many big engines have the name "Big Bertha?") It is too bad Big Bertha is not hooked up to a wheel with a brake so that they can provide a load on the engine so the cylinders continue to fire. Or maybe they could drive a pump that feeds a pipe that goes straight up 100' or so.
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Diesel engines are especially dominate in high horsepower applications.

This post that asks why such powerful engines are needed in locomotives shows the best and worst of social media. The comments range in helpfulness from "do Google" to one that taught me something. Now I can't find the most helpful comment. Most comments explain that the reason an engine runs at a lower RPM as it grows in size is that the mass of the components would tear the engine apart at higher RPM. But one comment explained that the speed is limited by the speed of the expansion of the explosion in the piston. That speed is constant, so as the stroke length increases, the RPM has to go down so that the speed of the piston movement remains slower than the explosion expansion.