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diesel engine

(Encyclopedia)diesel engine, type of internal-combustion engine invented by the German engineer Rudolf Diesel and patented by him in 1892. Although his engine was designed to use coal dust as fuel, the diesel engin...

engine

(Encyclopedia)engine: see diesel engine; internal-combustion engine; steam engine; rotary engine; automobile. ...

marine engine

(Encyclopedia)marine engine, machine for the propulsion of watercraft. The earliest marine power plants, reciprocating steam engines, were used almost exclusively until the early 1900s. In later ship construction t...

Stirling engine

(Encyclopedia)Stirling engine, an external combustion reciprocating engine having an enclosed working fluid that is alternately compressed and expanded to operate a piston, thus converting heat from a variety of so...

steam engine

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Steam engine steam engine, machine for converting heat energy into mechanical energy using steam as a medium, or working fluid. When water is converted into steam it expands, its volume increa...

internal-combustion engine

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Internal-combustion engines: In the four-stroke reciprocating engine (above), a mixture of fuel and air is taken into the chamber on the down-stroke of the piston, is compressed on the up-strok...

biodiesel

(Encyclopedia)biodiesel, fuel made from natural, renewable sources, such as new and used vegetable oils and animal fats, for use in a diesel engine. Biodiesel has physical properties very similar to petroleum-deriv...

fuel injection

(Encyclopedia)fuel injection, system in an internal-combustion engine that delivers fuel or a fuel-air mixture to the cylinders by means of pressure from a pump. It was originally used in diesel engines because of ...

locomotive

(Encyclopedia)locomotive, vehicle used to pull a train of unpowered railroad cars. Richard Trevithick, a British engineer and inventor, built and operated (1803–4) the first successful steam engine locomotive f...

fire engine

(Encyclopedia)fire engine: see fire fighting.