Diesel

Diesel engines do not need electricity to work.

They can be started by using compressed air. Then everything else can be run off mechanical or hydraulics.

So Charis could make diesel engines with out drawing the attention of the Rakurai or grossly violating the Proscriptions. These engines could be used to power ships or even tracked armored ground vehicles with breech loading rifled cannons. hint hint. The engines could even compress their own air for use in starting. So the diesel engines would be self sustaining in the field.

sunhawk wrote:Diesel engines do not need electricity to work.

There have been several long discussions on whether Diesel engines could be used without waking the Orbital Bombardment System (OBS or "Rakurai") True, they don't use electricity, but electricity is not the only thing prohibited by the Proscriptions -- just the only thing specifically prohibited in detail. Diesel engines produce combustion byproducts unique to high-pressure combustion and that "pollution" could be one of the OBS triggers.

Personally, I think that steam is adequate for the immediate future and all types of internal combustion can be bypassed once the Proscriptions and OBS are dealt with.

I figure they could get away with it. So long as they use fire vine oil or what ever passes for whale oil. Instead of using petroleum, which does exist on safehold.

Weird Harold wrote:

sunhawk wrote:Diesel engines do not need electricity to work.

There have been several long discussions on whether Diesel engines could be used without waking the Orbital Bombardment System (OBS or "Rakurai") True, they don't use electricity, but electricity is not the only thing prohibited by the Proscriptions -- just the only thing specifically prohibited in detail. Diesel engines produce combustion byproducts unique to high-pressure combustion and that "pollution" could be one of the OBS triggers.

Personally, I think that steam is adequate for the immediate future and all types of internal combustion can be bypassed once the Proscriptions and OBS are dealt with.

Diesel is 'more' polluting than coal fired steam engines?
What byproducts do you find in diesel combustion that you don't have in coal combustion?

Time to put a diesel engine on the same lonely island the steam engine was tested on.

RogueWarrior wrote:Diesel is 'more' polluting than coal fired steam engines?

What byproducts do you find in diesel combustion that you don't have in coal combustion?

NOx compounds among others. Diesel isn't "more" polluting, just "differently" polluting. Diesels (and other internal combustion engines, to a lesser extent) produce combustion byproducts that are distinguishable from coal fires.

In many ways, coal-fired steam engines are indistinguishable from hypocaust heating systems or coal-fired metal smelters. There's no real difference in the kind of pollution, just in the location and mobility.

Diesel engines require diesel fuel (or at least some kind of burnable liquid as fuel), which AFAIK, no one produces in any kind of quantity that engines would require.

At least with steam engines, coal was ALREADY dug up en masse. So the only fuel infrastructure steam engines require are mines, transportation, and storage all of which already exist or are easily built.

Liquid fuels - and Charis is likely to go with liquid fueled steam engines before making the leap to diesel - will require specialized tankage for storage, refineries to make them useful for engine applications, and dedicated plumbing for moving them around. ALL of which is going to need to be made in Charisian style foundries and then shipped to where they need to be built. You can't build these things using local carpenters and lots of trees.

And given that Houseman is already using coal gas to light his factories and the streets of Tellesberg, he or his people might decide to try coal/natural gas fueled engines first. They've already developed the tech to move flammable gasses around after all!

evilauthor wrote:..snip..
Liquid fuels - and Charis is likely to go with liquid fueled steam engines before making the leap to diesel - will require specialized tankage for storage, refineries to make them useful for engine applications, and dedicated plumbing for moving them around. ALL of which is going to need to be made in Charisian style foundries and then shipped to where they need to be built. You can't build these things using local carpenters and lots of trees.

And given that Houseman is already using coal gas to light his factories and the streets of Tellesberg, he or his people might decide to try coal/natural gas fueled engines first. They've already developed the tech to move flammable gasses around after all!

If you use vegetable oil there is no need for specialized storage, refineries etc, wooden barrels can be used for storage. The problem is the infrastructure to ship it around in large quantaties, you are going to have to build tankers among other things.

And speaking of refining, the current (official) level of chemical know-how is a tad lacking in that regard (although converting vegetable/animal fat to bio-diesel is quite a simple process).

Regarding distribution of the coal-gas, it's kind of easy to do it on land compared to having coal-gas powered ships (which would mean they would have to build LNG ships for bunkarage too). I doubt they would want to go that way since they would have to store massive volumes of highly compressed gas on ships which is a bad idea with the current tech-level. It's magnitudes easier and safer just to go the liquid fuel route.

evilauthor wrote:Diesel engines require diesel fuel (or at least some kind of burnable liquid as fuel), which AFAIK, no one produces in any kind of quantity that ...

Besides fuel they require injectors machined to very fine tolerances.

Weird Harold wrote:

RogueWarrior wrote:Diesel is 'more' polluting than coal fired steam engines?

What byproducts do you find in diesel combustion that you don't have in coal combustion?

NOx compounds among others. Diesel isn't "more" polluting, just "differently" polluting. Diesels (and other internal combustion engines, to a lesser extent) produce combustion byproducts that are distinguishable from coal fires.

In many ways, coal-fired steam engines are indistinguishable from hypocaust heating systems or coal-fired metal smelters. There's no real difference in the kind of pollution, just in the location and mobility.

You do realize that agriculture produces far more NOx than internal combustion engines. For that matter, it is produced in the manufacture of nitric acid, a necessary component for the manufacture of Dynamite/Lewisite as well as more modern explosives.

Yet somehow the NOx from internal combustion engines are going to set off the OBS but all the other sources some of which have been pumping far more NOx into the air from the very start than internal combustion engines ever will.

evilauthor wrote:Diesel engines require diesel fuel (or at least some kind of burnable liquid as fuel), which AFAIK, no one produces in any kind of quantity that engines would require.

At least with steam engines, coal was ALREADY dug up en masse. So the only fuel infrastructure steam engines require are mines, transportation, and storage all of which already exist or are easily built.

Liquid fuels - and Charis is likely to go with liquid fueled steam engines before making the leap to diesel - will require specialized tankage for storage, refineries to make them useful for engine applications, and dedicated plumbing for moving them around. ALL of which is going to need to be made in Charisian style foundries and then shipped to where they need to be built. You can't build these things using local carpenters and lots of trees.

And given that Houseman is already using coal gas to light his factories and the streets of Tellesberg, he or his people might decide to try coal/natural gas fueled engines first. They've already developed the tech to move flammable gasses around after all!

Actually, you can build a compression ignition engine for pretty much any kind of fuel. Diesel has the advantage that the hydrocarbon chains are short enough for the fuel to be a solvent so it is self cleaning. At the same time they are also long enough for the fluid to be a lubricant so it makes building a high pressure fuel pump easier. On top of that it barely requires any refining from crude oil and has convenient freezing and boiling points.

I wouldn't read to much importance in the small size of the oil industry. When this series tarted, not even Charis was producing steel in industrially significant quantities and now they are building entire ships using steel.

Gas storage and transport is far more difficult than liquid storage and transport. So, if Charis can store and transport coal gas in industrially significant quantities, doing the same for liquid fuels will not be difficult