I have made several spark ignition engines and when my current project is done (a 4 cylinder Westbury Sealion) I want to start on a diesel or semi diesel engine. I have studied diesel engine technology and more recently hot bulb and semi-diesel engine technology to try to understand the issues are involved.
From what I can see by using a high enough compression ratio in a model engine, getting a high enough temperature to ignite the fuel is quite possible. The real issue is injecting the tiny quantity of fuel needed and atomizing it to produce droplets that are small enough to mix with the air and burn in the very short time available.
In the early engines they resorted to using high pressure air, somewhat like one does in a paint sprayer, to create small enough droplets to get adequate combustion. The compressor required needed significant power and was a source of unreliability, so there was a huge incentive to make airless or "solid" injection work. By the end of the 1920s this had been achieved for large, low speed diesel engines where there was adequate time for the combustion to take place.
When people started working on high speed diesel engines for vehicles, they had to use high turbulence pre-combustion chambers to get adequate mixing of the air and fuel droplets in the time available. Injection pressures were a few thousand psi. Nowadays, diesel engines in vehicles use direct injection, nozzles with extremely fine holes and pressures of over 30,000 psi.
I really admire Bengt Olausson for the model he has made and his workmanship in making the pump and injector for the engine. The engine obviously runs well without any obvious exhaust smoke under idling conditions. I wonder what happens when more fuel is injected to produce some power and there is less excess oxygen to complete the combustion? It seems to me that it is possible to get an engine run with relatively coarse injection but that combustion will be incomplete and there will be smoke in the exhaust.
I am thinking of starting with a hot bulb/semi-diesel where finely atomized injection is less critical and the heated surface helps turn the fuel into vapour as well as bring about ignition.
John Lovegrove
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