Page 1 of 1
External combustion engine
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:17 pm
by plodder
Not sure if the name is entirely accurate but anyway.
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheDreadShip ... 0802194435
Re: External combustion engine
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:35 pm
by lpm
Oh great, another moron-gif twitter thread. For stupid people who need silly illustrations.
Re: External combustion engine
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:42 pm
by tenchboy
Thanks plodder, enjoyed that. I especially liked the illustration of Alfred Nobel's aluminium yacht. I don't know much about boats but that looked pretty slick to me.
Re: External combustion engine
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:42 pm
by tenchboy
Ah!
Re: External combustion engine
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 4:33 pm
by Grumble
Seems entirely lifted from Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naphtha_l ... prov=sfti1
Not that it’s a bad thing to promote interesting stuff everywhere, but it would be nice to throw credit around (unless of course I have the order of events the wrong way around, and maybe the Twitter thread writer also wrote the wiki page)
Re: External combustion engine
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 6:24 pm
by nekomatic
Given Wikipedia’s mission is to spread knowledge for free for the greater good of humanity*, it seems a bit churlish to complain of someone taking Wikipedia content** for free and spreading it for the greater good of humanity, but with pictures.
And for anyone who doesn’t like moronic Twitter threads, I can reveal to you this one weird old trick for not having to see them.
* Well I assume it’s something like this
** if they have in fact done so
Re: External combustion engine
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 7:04 pm
by Bird on a Fire
Yeah, what a bunch of killjoy nyer-nyers upthread.
Re: External combustion engine
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 8:03 pm
by lpm
The day we stop fighting back against stupidity is the day the world goes to sh.t.
That day was in early 2004.
Re: External combustion engine
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 8:17 pm
by Bird on a Fire
lpm wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 8:03 pm
The day we stop fighting back against stupidity is the day the world goes to sh.t.
That day was in early 2004.
TLDR
Can u do a emoji+gif version plz.
Re: External combustion engine
Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2022 10:20 am
by Boustrophedon
The various article seem to skate over the one salient feature that made early steam engines dangerous; the large volume of superheated water present in a fire tube boiler. Later water tube boilers are much less prone to catastrophic explosions as there is less water and hence less stored energy and the inherent strength of small tubes versus a big cylindrical vessel, critical crack length and all that.
Using naphtha in a 'water tube' design is quite logical in an engineering sense so long as you use a high degree of superheat, else the Carnot efficiency is low.
It should be noticed that the CANDU nuclear reactor is a water tube design whereas all the other designs AGR and PWRs are essentially fire tube designs with large pressure vessels.
Re: External combustion engine
Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2022 4:09 pm
by plodder
Boustrophedon wrote: ↑Wed Jun 29, 2022 10:20 am
The various article seem to skate over the one salient feature that made early steam engines dangerous; the large volume of superheated water present in a fire tube boiler. Later water tube boilers are much less prone to catastrophic explosions as there is less water and hence less stored energy and the inherent strength of small tubes versus a big cylindrical vessel, critical crack length and all that.
Using naphtha in a 'water tube' design is quite logical in an engineering sense so long as you use a high degree of superheat, else the Carnot efficiency is low.
It should be noticed that the CANDU nuclear reactor is a water tube design whereas all the other designs AGR and PWRs are essentially fire tube designs with large pressure vessels.
I quite like the idea of a petrol-cooled nuclear reactor.
Re: External combustion engine
Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:30 pm
by Martin Y
plodder wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 4:09 pm
I quite like the idea of a petrol-cooled nuclear reactor.
Slightly less of an instant
"Wait, what?" than sodium cooled ones.
Re: External combustion engine
Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2022 10:00 am
by EACLucifer
These sound dangerous, but they actually worked reasonably well. They were generally quite low pressure, and not the most efficient, but as a way of dodging a regulation that honestly wasn't really very necessary for small water-tube boilers, they were fine.