Nikolaus Otto

5 Key excerpts on "Nikolaus Otto"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  Energy and Society

  An Introduction, Second Edition

  • Harold H. Schobert(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  The machine was noisy and cumbersome, but it worked, and with sufficient development, it could be transformed into a viable engine. Smooth action of the Lenoir engine was achieved by the adoption of the “Otto cycle,” which we will examine in Chapter 19. The German merchant Nikolaus August Otto* became so interested in the Lenoir gas engine that he had a couple made under license by a workshop in Cologne. They did not work very well, so Otto, who was convinced of the engine’s great potential, sat down and redesigned the whole thing. In this endeavor, Otto teamed up with an engineer, Eugen Langen. The operating efficiency of the Otto–Langen engine was much better than that of Lenoir’s gas engine. Otto and Langen carried on experi-menting, and the ultimate outcome of their work, in 1876, was a great breakthrough, the first four-stroke engine. Successful operation of Otto’s internal combustion engine design (Figure 17.8) required very fast combustion inside the cylinder. The fuel needed to mix almost instantaneously with air, meaning that it had to be a material that would vaporize very easily. A cheap material that fitted this criterion very nicely was the useless by-product of distilling petroleum—gasoline. The problem of getting gasoline into the cylinders quickly and efficiently was solved in 1893 by a German engineer, Wilhelm Maybach. The inspiration for his device was a popular fashion accessory of that era, the per-fume atomizer. Maybach and his colleague, Gottlieb Daimler, adapted the concept of the perfume atomizer to inject or spray gasoline into the cylinders of Otto’s internal * Nikolaus Otto (1832–1891) served an apprenticeship in business and then worked in businesses in Frankfurt and Cologne. He apparently had no formal training in engineering or related subjects.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Steam Traction on the Road

  From Trevithick to Sentinel: 150 Years of Design & Development

  • Anthony Burton(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Pen & Sword Transport

    (Publisher)

  The first real breakthrough was made in 1859 by the Frenchman Étienne Lenoir who designed an engine in which the explosive force was provided by a mixture of gas and air, ignited by an electric spark. It proved too expensive to run, costing a great deal more than the equivalent steam engine. The next stage of development was the work of another French engineer, Alphonse Beau de Rochas. He proposed a cycle of events based on a horizontal engine. It began when the piston was moving towards the crankshaft and the gas-air mixture was drawn into the cylinder. On the second stroke, the gas was compressed and at dead centre, the gas was ignited, driving the piston for the third stroke. On the final stroke, the burnt gases were exhausted from the cylinder. This is the four-stroke cycle – injection, compression, ignition, exhaust. He patented the idea, but never developed it and the patent lapsed. In 1878, the German engineer Nikolaus Otto developed the same idea – it is not clear whether or not he had heard of the Beau de Rochas - but the 4-stroke cycle became known as the Otto cycle. He was a practical engineer who realised that he could use coal gas as a fuel and that this was a commercially viable system. Within a few years over 30,000 Otto gas engines, manufactured by Otto & Langen, were at work all round the world. There were obvious advantages to the new engines, not least the fact that they could be worked from a town gas supply and no one had to be paid to keep a furnace stoked to provide the power. But that also meant that they were strictly limited to wherever the gas was supplied – they were not at this stage of any value to the world of transport. No one seriously considered the idea of taking a large reservoir of methane gas along to keep a vehicle moving. But once the idea of the internal combustion engine had been well and truly established and its advantages appreciated, it was only a matter of time before new ways of using it would be found. What was needed was an easily portable fuel source.

  Léon Serpollet’s

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Icons of Invention

  The Makers of the Modern World from Gutenberg to Gates [2 volumes]

  • John W. Klooster(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  However, by some accounts, Rudolf was not able to design an actual engine using Carnot’s theory and proceeded to design his own engine. Previously, in about 1885, Rudolf had conceived of an engine that would dispense with the need for an externally operated ignition source for a cylinder 234 Icons of Invention chamber, as in the Otto engine. The ignition source in the Otto engine was at first a timed, heated filament and later an electric spark. By eliminating the ignition source, Rudolf’s proposed ‘‘Diesel engine’’ would be an improvement over the Otto engine. His original idea was to compress a fuel-air mixture in a cylinder with an operating reciprocating piston until the mixture became hot enough to ignite itself and produce a surge of heat and expansion. Evidently, in February 1892 he was granted a German patent from a patent application he had filed embodying this idea. Aiming to embody his idea, he started a research program that would last for more than a dozen years. Rudolf wrote a book that was published in 1893 relating to a theoretical engine that could replace the steam engine in efficiency. His expressed hope was that, if he could achieve such an engine, working people would then have the independence they had experienced prior to the Industrial Revolu- tion and could compete with large industry. He thought that the cheap fuels that he proposed for use in operating his new engine would result in a scal- ing down of many large, costly factory processes and would result in better living conditions for working people, perhaps even a return to small, cottage-type industries. His new compression-ignition engine was then still theoretical and not reduced to practice. Apparently as fuel for that engine he proposed to use coal dust mixed with air. This mixture would be compressed in a cylinder by a reciprocating piston until the compressed mixture became hot enough to self-ignite and drive the piston in a reverse direction.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Thermodynamic Cycles

  Computer-Aided Design and Optimization

  • Chih Wu(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  3

  Gas Closed-System Cycles

  3.1   Otto Cycle

  A four-stroke internal combustion engine was built by a German engineer, Nicholas Otto, in 1876. The cycle patterned after his design is called the Otto cycle. It is the most widely used internal combustion heat engine in automobiles.

  The piston in a four-stroke internal combustion engine executes four complete strokes as the crankshaft completes two revolutions per cycle, as shown in Fig. 3.1 . On the intake stroke, the intake valve is open and the piston moves downward in the cylinder, drawing in a premixed charge of gasoline and air until the piston reaches its lowest point of the stroke called bottom dead center (BDC). During the compression stroke the intake valve closes and the piston moves toward the top of the cylinder, compressing the fuel-air mixture. As the piston approaches the top of the cylinder called top dead center (TDC), the spark plug is energized and the mixture ignites, creating an increase in the temperature and pressure of the gas. During the expansion stroke the piston is forced down by the high-pressure gas, producing a useful work output. The cycle is then completed when the exhaust valve opens and the piston moves toward the top of the cylinder, expelling the products of combustion.

  Figure 3.1

  Otto cycle.

  The thermodynamic analysis of an actual Otto cycle is complicated. To simplify the analysis, we consider an ideal Otto cycle composed entirely of internally reversible processes. In the Otto cycle analysis, a closed piston–eylinder assembly is used as a control mass system.

  The cycle consists of the following four processes: 1-2 Isentropic compression 2-3 Constant-volume heat addition 3-4 Isentropic expansion 4-1 Constant-volume heat removal

  The p–v and T–s process diagrams for the ideal Otto cycle are illustrated in Fig. 3.2

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  No longer available |Learn more

  Handbook of Diesel, Automobile and Piston Engines

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Academic Studio

    (Publisher)

  He operated his first successful engine in 1897. His engine was the first to prove that fuel could be ignited without a spark. Though best known for his invention of the pressure-ignited heat engine that bears his name, Rudolf Diesel was also a well-respected thermal engineer and a social theorist. Diesel's inventions have three points in common: they relate to heat transfer by natural physical processes or laws; they involve markedly creative mechanical design; and they were initially motivated by the inventor's concept of sociological needs. Rudolf Diesel originally conceived the diesel engine to enable independent craftsmen and artisans to compete with industry. At Augsburg, on August 10, 1893, Rudolf Diesel's prime model, a single 10-foot (3.0 m) iron cylinder with a flywheel at its base, ran on its own power for the first time. Diesel spent two more years making improvements and in 1896 demonstrated another model with a theoretical efficiency of 75 percent, in contrast to the 10 percent efficiency of the steam engine. By 1898, Diesel had become a millionaire. His engines were used to power ____________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ____________________ pipelines, electric and water plants, automobiles and trucks, and marine craft. They were soon to be used in mines, oil fields, factories, and transoceanic shipping. How diesel engines work Diesel engine model, left side ____________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ____________________ Diesel engine model, right side The diesel internal combustion engine differs from the gasoline powered Otto cycle by using highly compressed, hot air to ignite the fuel rather than using a spark plug ( compression ignition rather than spark ignition ). In the true diesel engine, only air is initially introduced into the combustion chamber.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book