At home we shall have good reason to welcome the pedrail if it frees us from those terrible corrugated tracks so dreaded by the cyclist, and to bless it if it actually beats our roads down into a greater smoothness than they now can boast.
[CHAPTER VI]
INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES
OIL ENGINES — ENGINES WORKED WITH PRODUCER GAS — BLAST FURNACE GAS ENGINES
If carbon and oxygen be made to combine chemically, the process is accompanied by the phenomenon called heat. If heat be applied to a liquid or gas in a confined space it causes a violent separation of its molecules, and power is developed.
In the case of a steam-engine the fuel is coal (carbon in a more or less pure form), the fluid, water. By burning the fuel under a boiler, a gas is formed which, if confined, rapidly increases the pressure on the walls of the confining vessel. If allowed to pass into a cylinder, the molecules of steam, struggling to get as far as possible from one another, will do useful work on a piston connected by rods to a revolving crank.
We here see the combustion of fuel external to the cylinder, i.e. under the boiler, and the fuel and fluid kept apart out of actual contact. In the gas or oil-vapour engine the fuel is brought into contact with the fluid which does the work, mixed with it, and burnt inside the cylinder. Therefore these engines are termed internal combustion engines.
Supposing that a little gunpowder were placed in a cylinder, of which the piston had been pushed almost as far in as it would go, and that the powder were fired by electricity. The charcoal would unite with the oxygen contained in the saltpetre and form a large volume of gas. This gas, being heated by the ignition, would instantaneously expand and drive out the piston violently.
A very similar thing happens at each explosion of an internal combustion engine. Into the cylinder is drawn a charge of gas, containing carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, and also a proportion of air. This charge is squeezed by the inward movement of the piston; its temperature is raised by the compression, and at the proper moment it is ignited. The oxygen and carbon seize on one another and burn (or combine), the heat being increased by the combustion of the hydrogen. The air atoms are expanded by the heat, and work is done on the piston. But the explosion is much gentler than in the case of gunpowder.