Modern Engines and Power Generators, Vol. 3: A Practical Work on Prime Movers, and the Transmission of Power, Steam, Electric, Water, and Hot Air (Classic Reprint)

Volume is descriptive of prime movers on road vehicles steam, oil, and petrol, with some further reference to the coming prime mover, the hot air or gas turbine. The chief developments in prime movers for road vehicles and for small boats have been in the direction of improved internal combustion reciprocating engines, mostly of that class employing petrol fuel, and not of great powers. The petrol-electric system has been adopted on one railway in a tentative way, and has much in its favour. It is a system worthy of more attention for road vehicles, as offering a satisfactory substitute for the complications introduced by mechanical gearing. For speed control, reversing and differential gear, mechanical devices must be inefficient, noisy, and in course of time develop slackness. The turbine has not come forward in road or rail traction, the principal drawback being the inefficiency of all turbines working non-condensing ;a very high vacuum being required for any approach to satisfactory efficiency. The application of internal combustion engines to small boats, mostly for sporting and pleasure purposes, has grown to some extent; but no serious attempts to solve the many problems arising in the question of applying internal combustion engines to marine propulsion have been made. It is evident that small engines using petrol or oil as fuel are out of the question for commercial purposes, and that coal of cheap quality must be used as the fuel in large vessels. This points to gas engines working with producer gas. For heavy road traction probably the same system can be applied. Coal, however, in a road vehicle does not constitute a large item in the expenses ;as may be seen on page 182, it amounts to about 20 per cent, of the total. The petrol and oil engines on road vehicles are rapidly nearing finality in design of reciprocating types. There is not much room f
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