External Engine and Internal Combustion Engine Defined?
Engines convert a source of energy into physical work. If you want to transport something, an engine is just the thing to do it. But not all engines are made the same, and different types of engines certainly don’t work the same.
Probably the most intuitive manner to differentiate between them is the sort of power each engine makes use of for energy.
- Thermal engines
- Internal combustion engines (IC engines)
- External combustion engines (EC engines)
Thermal engines
- Thermal engines require a source of heat to convert into motion.
- Depending on how they generate the needed heat, those may be combustive (that burn stuff) or non-combustive engines.
- They function both through direct combustion of a propellant or via the transformation of a fluid to generate work.
- As such, most thermal engines additionally see some overlap with chemical drive structures.
- They can be airbreathing engines (that take oxidizer inclusive of oxygen from the atmosphere) or non-airbreathing engines (that have oxidizers chemically tied in the fuel).
1. External combustion engines
- External combustion engines in a simpler form EC engines maintain fuel and exhaust products in two separate ways.
- They burn fuel in a single chamber and heat the operating fluid inside the engine via a heat exchanger or the engine’s wall.
- The great invention of the Industrial Revolution, the steam engine, falls into this category.
- In a few aspects, EC engines function similarly to their IC counterparts they both require heat which is obtained by burning materials.
- There are, however, several variations as well.
- EC engines use fluids that go through thermal dilation-contraction or a shift in phase, however, their chemical composition remains unaltered.
- The fluid used can both be gaseous (as in the Stirling engine), liquid (the Organic Rankine cycle engine), or go through an alternate of phase (as in the steam engine) for IC engines, the fluid is sort of universally a liquid fuel and air aggregate that combustion (modifications its chemical composition).
- Finally, the engines can either exhaust the fluid after use like IC engines do (open-cycle engines) or constantly use the identical fluid (closed-cycle engines).
- Surprisingly, the primary steam engines to look at commercial use generated work by using a vacuum instead of pressure called ‘atmospheric engines’.
- These have been ponderous machines and highly gas inefficient.
- In time, steam engines took on the shape and traits you anticipate to look from engines nowadays and became more efficient.
- Reciprocating steam engines introduced the piston system (nevertheless in use through IC engines today) and compound engine systems re-used the fluid in cylinders at lowering pressures to generate extra power.
- Today, steam engines have fallen out of size, they’re heavy, cumbersome things, have a lower fuel performance and has a lower power-to-weight ratio than IC engines, and can’t trade output as quickly.
- But if you’re now not bothered about their weight, size, and need a constant supply of power, they’re great.
- As such, EC is currently acquiring fame as it is used in steam turbine engines for naval operations and electricity plants.
- Nuclear strength programs have the difference of being called non-combustive or external thermal engines for the reason that they operate on the same standards of EC engines however they don’t derive their strength from combustion.
2. Internal combustion engines
- Internal combustion engines (IC engines) are quite ubiquitous these days. They can power cars, lawnmowers, helicopters, and so on.
- The biggest IC engine can generate 109,000 HP energy which can power 20,000 containers.
- IC engines derive strength from gas burned internally in a specialized region of the system called a combustion chamber.
- The system of combustion generates reaction products (exhaust) with a high total volume than that of the reactants combined (fuel and oxidizer).
- This expansion is the main supplier of IC engines this is what simply offers the motion.
- Heat is only a byproduct of combustion and represents a wasted part of the fuel’s energy store because it doesn’t, in reality, offer any physical work.
- IC engines are differentiated in using the number of ‘strokes’ or cycles each piston makes for a full rotation of the crankshaft.
- Most common nowadays are 4-stroke engines, which break down the combustion reaction in four steps:
i) Induction or injection of a gas-air mix (the carburate) into the combustion chamber.
ii) Compression of the mix.
iii) Ignition by using a spark plug or compression.
iv) Emission of the exhaust.
- For each step, a 4-stroke piston is an alternative pushed down or gain up.
- Ignition is the simplest step where work is generated in the engine, so for all other steps, each piston is predicated on power from external sources (the alternative pistons, an electric starter, manual cranking, or the crankshaft’s inertia) to move.
- That’s why you have to pull the chord on your lawnmower, and why your automobile wishes an operating battery to begin running.
- Other criteria for differentiating IC engines are the kind of fuel used, the wide variety of cylinders, total displacement (internal volume of cylinders), distribution of cylinders (vertical, horizontal, V-engines, etc.), as well as strength and energy-to-weight output.
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