Diesel Engines for Land and Marine Work (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ...working on bituminous coal, it may be taken that anthracite would have to be employed at any rate to guarantee sufficient reliability of operation for marine work. The relative prices of anthracite and the bunker coal used with steam engines at once largely minimize, if they do not entirely destroy, the economy in fuel costs with gas engines. Owing to the necessity of the producer, a gas installation saves little or nothing in space or weight, as compared with the steam plant, and firemen are required for the producer or for the boiler, though of course the same attention is not required, but in any case the reduction in the number of attendants would be small. Further a satisfactorily reversible gas engine is at present hardly an accomplished fact, and speed variation is a difficult problem; taking all matters into consideration, therefore, it is safe to say the adoption of gas engines for the propulsion of ships is not likely to make much headway in the future, although there may be one or two isolated instances in which a certain measure of success may be obtained. It is apparent that provided an oil engine could be produced which is equal to a steam engine in reliability, it would have many points of superiority as compared with the gas engine while retaining all the general advantages of the internal combustion engine. Hence the Diesel engine, which has proved itself more efficient than, and at least as serviceable as, the gas engine for land work, seems to be eminently adapted for the propulsion of ships, but there have naturally been many difficulties to overcome before it could be in a position to compare with the steam engine, in matters which for marine work are of perhaps greater importance than mere economy. A marine engine must...