Ask Joe Mechanic - Diesel Engine Historical Timeline

A Historic Timeline of significant developments pertaining to diesel engines:





1890s

• 1891: Herbert Akroyd Stuart invents the first internal combustion engine to use a pressurized fuel injection system.
• 1892: February 23, Rudolf Diesel obtained a patent (RP 67207) titled "Arbeitsverfahren und Ausführungsart für Verbrennungsmaschinen".
• 1892: Akroyd Stuart builds his first working Diesel engine.
• 1893: Diesel's essay titled Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat-engine to Replace the Steam Engine and Combustion Engines Known Today appeared.
• 1893: August 10, Diesel built his first working prototype in Augsburg.
• 1897: Adolphus Busch licenses rights to the Diesel Engine for the USA and Canada.
• 1899: Diesel licensed his engine to builders Krupp and Sulzer, who quickly became major manufacturers.

1900s

• 1902: Until 1910 MAN produced 82 copies of the stationary diesel engine.
• 1903: Two first diesel-powered ships were launched, both for river and canal operations: Petite-Pierre in France, powered by Dyckhoff-built diesels, and Vandal tanker in Russia, powered by Swedish-built diesels with an electrical transmission.
• 1904: The French built the first diesel submarine, the Z.
• 1905: Four diesel engine turbochargers and intercoolers were manufactured by Büchl (CH), as well as a scroll-type supercharger from Creux (F) company.
• 1908: Prosper L'Orange and Deutz developed a precisely controlled injection pump with a needle injection nozzle.
• 1909: The prechamber with a hemispherical combustion chamber was developed by Prosper L'Orange with Benz.

1910s

• 1910: The Norwegian research ship Fram was a sailing ship fitted with an auxiliary diesel engine, and was thus the first ocean-going ship with a diesel engine.
•  1912: The Danish built the first ocean-going ship exclusively powered by a diesel engine, MS Selandia. The first locomotive with a diesel engine also appeared.
• 1913: U.S. Navy submarines used NELSECO units. Rudolf Diesel died mysteriously when he crossed the English Channel on the SS Dresden.
• 1914: German U-boats were powered by MAN diesels.
• 1919: Prosper L'Orange obtained a patent on a prechamber insert and made a needle injection nozzle. First diesel engine from Cummins.

1920s

• 1922: The first vehicle with a (pre-chamber) diesel engine was Agricultural Tractor Type 6 of the Benz Söhne agricultural tractor OE Benz Sendling.
• 1923: The first truck with pre-chamber diesel engine made by MAN and Benz. Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft testing the first air-injection diesel-engined truck.
• 1924: The introduction on the truck market of the diesel engine by commercial truck manufacturers in the IAA. Fairbanks-Morse starts building diesel engines.
• 1927: First truck injection pump and injection nozzles of Bosch. First passenger car prototype of Stoewer.

1930s

• 1930s: Caterpillar started building diesels for their tractors.
• 1930: First US diesel-power passenger car (Cummins powered Packard) built in Columbus, Indiana (USA)
• 1933: First European passenger cars with diesel engines (Citroën Rosalie); Citroën used an engine of the English diesel pioneer Sir Harry Ricardo. The car did not go into production due to legal restrictions on the use of diesel engines.
• 1936: Mercedes-Benz built the 260D diesel car. AT&SF inaugurated the diesel train Super Chief. The airship Hindenburg was powered by diesel engines. First series of passenger cars manufactured with diesel engine (Mercedes-Benz 260 D, Hanomag and Saurer). Daimler Benz airship diesel engine 602LOF6 for the LZ129 Hindenburg airship

1940s

• 1942: Tatra started production of Tatra 111 with air-cooled V12 diesel engine.
• 1943-'46: The Common-rail (CRD) system was invented (and patented by) Clessie Cummins
• 1944: Development of air cooling for diesel engines by Klöckner Humboldt Deutz AG (KHD) for the production stage, and later also for Magirus Deutz.

1950s

• 1953: Turbo-diesel truck for Mercedes in small series.
• 1954: Turbo-diesel truck in mass production by Volvo. First diesel engine with an overhead cam shaft of Daimler Benz.

1960s

• 1960: The diesel drive displaced steam turbines and coal fired steam engines.
• 1962-'65: A diesel compression braking system, eventually to be manufactured by Jacobs (of drill chuck fame) and nicknamed the "Jake Brake", was invented and patented by Clessie Cummins.
•  1968: Peugeot introduced the first 204 small cars with a transversally mounted diesel engine and front-wheel drive.

1970s

• 1973: DAF produced an air-cooled diesel engine.
• 1976 February: Tested a diesel engine for the Volkswagen Golf passenger car. The Cummins Common Rail injection system was further developed by the ETH Zurich from 1976 to 1992.
• 1978: Mercedes produced the first passenger car turbo-diesels (Mercedes 300 SD).
• 1978: Oldsmobile introduced the first passenger car diesel engine produced by an American car company.

1980s

• 1985: ATI Intercooler diesel engine from DAF. European Truck Common Rail system with the IFA truck type W50 introduced.
• 1986: Electronic Diesel Control (EDC) of Bosch with the BMW 524td.
• 1986: The Fiat Croma was the first passenger car in the world to have a direct injection turbodiesel engine in (1986).

1990s

• 1991: European emission standards Euro 1 met with the truck diesel engine of Scania.
• 1994: Unit injector system by Bosch for diesel engines.
• 1995: First successful use of common rail in a production vehicle, by Denso in Japan, Hino "Rising Ranger" truck.
• 1997: First common rail in passenger car, Alfa Romeo 156.
•  1998: BMW made history by winning the 24 Hour Nürburgring race with the 320d, powered by a two-litre, four-cylinder diesel engine. The combination of high-performance with better fuel efficiency allowed the team to make fewer pit stops during the long endurance race.

2000s

• 2002: A street-driven Dodge Dakota pickup with a 735 horsepower (548 kW) diesel engine built at Gale banks engineering hauls its own service trailer to the Bonneville Salt Flats and set an FIA land speed record as the world's fastest pickup truck with a one-way run of 222 mph (357 km/h) and a two-way average of 217 mph (349 km/h).
• 2004: In Western Europe, the proportion of passenger cars with diesel engine exceeded 50%. Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system in Mercedes, Euro 4 with EGR system and particle filters of MAN. Piezoelectric injector technology by Bosch.
• 2006: Audi R10 TDI won 12 hours running in Sebring and defeated all other engine concepts. The same car won the 2006 24 Hours of Le Mans.
• 2006: JCB Dieselmax broke the FIA Diesel Land speed record from 1973, eventually setting the new record at over 350 mph (563 km/h).
• 2008: Subaru introduced the first horizontally opposed diesel engine to be fitted to a passenger car. This is a Euro 5 compliant engine with an EGR system.
• 2009: Volkswagen won the 2009 Dakar Rally held in Argentina and Chile. The first diesel to do so. Race Touareg 2 finished 1st and 2nd.

2010s

• 2010: Mitsubishi developed and started mass production of its 4N13 1.8 L DOHC I4, the world's first passenger car diesel engine that features a variable valve timing system.

Next week; How diesel engines work, types of diesel engines and if space permits, advantages and disadvantages of diesel engines.

Some information obtained from Wikipedia.org.

Ask Joe Mechanic - Diesel Engine Vehicles (Part 1)

After covering hybrid and electric powered vehicles for the previous several weeks, I am now going to spend several weeks discussing diesel-powered vehicles. I will demonstrate their history, how they work, types, inherent advantages and disadvantages, why they are so efficient, safety, recent and future innovations.  Also we will discuss the comparisons of diesel use throughout the world as compared to the USA, and why the disparity exists.

A diesel engine (also known as a compression-ignition engine) is an internal combustion engine that uses the heat of compression to initiate ignition and burn the fuel that has been injected into the combustion chamber. This contrasts with spark-ignition engines such as a gasoline engine or gas engine (using a gaseous fuel as opposed to gasoline), which use a spark plug to ignite an air-fuel mixture. The diesel engine has the highest thermal efficiency of any standard internal or external combustion engine due to its very high compression ratio.

Diesel engines are manufactured in two-stroke and four-stroke versions. They were originally used as a more efficient replacement for stationary steam engines. Since the 1910s they have been used in submarines and ships. Use in locomotives, trucks, heavy equipment and electric generating plants followed later. In the 1930s, they slowly began to be used in a few automobiles. 

According to the British Society of Motor Manufacturing and Traders, the EU average for diesel cars account for 50 percent of the total diesel powered vehicles sold, including 70 percent in France and 38 percent in the UK. 

In 1885, the English inventor Herbert Akroyd Stuart began investigating the possibility of using paraffin oil (very similar to modern-day diesel) for an engine, which unlike petrol would be difficult to be vaporized in a carburetor as its volatility is not sufficient to allow this. 

His engines, built from 1891 by Richard Hornsby and Sons, were the first internal combustion engines, to use a pressurized fuel injection system. The Hornsby-Akroyd engine used a comparatively low compression ratio, so that the temperature of the air compressed in the combustion chamber at the end of the compression stroke was not high enough to initiate combustion. Combustion instead took place in a separated combustion chamber, the "vaporizer" (also called the "hot bulb") mounted on the cylinder head, into which fuel was sprayed. Self-ignition occurred from contact between the fuel-air mixture and the hot walls of the vaporizer. As the engine's load increased, so did the temperature of the bulb, causing the ignition period to advance; to counteract pre-ignition, water was dripped into the air intake. 

The modern diesel engine incorporates the features of direct (airless) injection and compression-ignition. Akroyd Stuart and Charles Richard Binney patented both of these ideas in May 1890. Another patent was taken out on 8 October 1890, detailing the working of a complete engine - essentially that of a diesel engine - where air and fuel are introduced separately. The difference between the Akroyd engine and the modern diesel engine was the requirement to supply extra heat to the cylinder to start the engine from cold. By 1892, Akroyd Stuart had produced an updated version of the engine that no longer required the additional heat source, a year before diesel's engine.

            In 1892, Akroyd Stuart patented a water-jacketed vaporizer to allow compression ratios to be increased. In the same year, Thomas Henry Barton at Hornsbys built a working high-compression version for experimental purposes, whereby the vaporizer was replaced with a cylinder head, therefore not relying on air being preheated, but by combustion through higher compression ratios. It ran for six hours - the first time automatic ignition was produced by compression alone. This was five years before Rudolf Diesel built his well-known high-compression prototype engine in 1897.

Rudolf Diesel was, however, subsequently credited with the innovation, and he was able to improve the engine further, whereas Akroyd Stuart stopped development on his engine in 1893.

In 1892, he received patents in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States for "Method of and Apparatus for Converting Heat into Work". In 1893, he described a "slow-combustion engine" that first compressed air thereby raising its temperature above the igniting-point of the fuel, then gradually introducing fuel while letting the mixture expand "against resistance sufficiently to prevent an essential increase of temperature and pressure", then cutting off fuel and "expanding without transfer of heat”. In 1894 and 1895 he filed patents and addenda in various countries for his Diesel engine; the first patents were issued in Spain (No. 16,654), France (No. 243,531) and Belgium (No. 113,139) in December 1894, and in Germany (No. 86,633) in 1895 and the United States (No. 608,845) in 1898. He operated his first successful engine in 1897.

At Augsburg, on August 10, 1893, Rudolf Diesel's prime model, a single 10-foot (3.0 m) iron cylinder with a flywheel at its base, ran on its own power for the first time. Diesel spent two more years making improvements and in 1896 demonstrated another model with a theoretical efficiency of 75 percent, in contrast to the 10 percent efficiency of the steam engine. By 1898, Diesel had become a millionaire. His engines were used to power pipelines, electric and water plants, automobiles and trucks, and marine craft. They were soon to be used in mines, oil fields, factories, and transoceanic shipping.