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23.2.1893: Patent for Diesel |
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In recent years, engineers have come up with improvements like CDI, TDI, CRS - tiny injection pumps, turbo chargers and the so-called common-rail technique.
Dietmar Voss of Deutz AG in Cologne, one of the leading diesel engine manufacturers in the world said, "I assess the technology as follows, that the diesel engine still has enormous potential.”
Many different vehicles are powered by diesel engines: locomotives, ships, lorries and cars. The diesel age began at the end of the 19th century. "Theory and design of an efficient heat engine to replace the steam engine and combustion engines", was the title of an article in which the new type of engine was first described in 1893.
Back then, a young engineer by the name of Rudolf Diesel was a man with a vision. Rudolf Diesel's goal was to increase the compression ratio in the engine, he came up with the so-called compression ignition system.
The idea behind it was, if the air in an engine could be compressed quickly enough and fuel were to be injected at the same time, the mixture would ignite without needing a sparkplug, like normal gasoline engine. Diesel was granted the patent on 23 February 1893. With the patent under his belt, Diesel turned to several engine manufacturers. He got his first break at the Augsburg Engineering Works . Diesel could go ahead and build his engine.
According to Dietmar Voss, "Diesel had initially thought about very high degrees of compression. That was not technically feasible. Four years later, at the beginning of 1897, it worked at last. In workshop “A 11” of the Augsburg Engineering Works, the first diesel ran on traditional lamp petroleum. The technical stats: 20 HP and 172 revolutions per minute.
The efficiency of the new machine was about 25 percent. That means a quarter of the energy that is put in sets the engine in motion. That doesn’t sound very impressive, but it represents a record. Neither the good old steam engine nor the up-and-coming gasoline engines were that efficient. No other engine type utilises the fuel as efficiently as the diesel engine. Incidentally, that hasn’t changed, even today.
Diesel Rudolf made it. The first licences were quickly sold. The new type of engine was also built in the USA, which proved to be as reliable and economical. Diesel Rudolf’s success didn’t last long, however. Patent quarrels kept the lawyers occupied. In 1913, in addition to psychological problems he was deeply in debt.
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