MOTIVE POWER

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 242, 12 April 1912, Page 8

MOTIVE POWER

THE LAST WORD. A WONDERFUL ENGINE. Many people have come to regard the turbine as the last word in the development of motive power as applied to

shipping. But within the last/two years a rival to the turbine has arisen which £ threatens not' only to oust the turbine, 'but to drive steam itself from the field ] as a source of motive energy. This new ' competitor is the old internal combusj tion motor in a new guise, and it is . claimed by its admirers that it is cheaper, simpler, and more efficient than any r form of steam engine yet invented. But , this end is not to be attained by fol!(lowing the lines on which the petrol . motor has achieved such remarkable . | success. The newest foriv of oil engine Jis "a slow-running internal combustion .1 motor using the crudest grades of oil fuel"; and even in the comparatively rough form which it has already taken it has proved itself immensely superior to the ordinary petrol motor for most of the purposes of marine transport and oceanic trade. The world owes the new marine oil engine to a German scientist, Dr. Diesel, who realised that there was a great field for "an internal combustion motor capable of running on a heavy oil having a high flash- * point, which could be built in highpowered units for marine work." The principal feature of the Diesen engine which differentiates it from the ordinary petrol motor is the absence of any ordinary ignition apparatus. When the avei age petrol motor goes wron" nine times out of ten the defect is in the firing of the charge. Diesel's chief innovation was to substitute for the ordinary method of firing a jet of compressed air. The compression of .the ; air raises its temperature, and as the l oil used has a low flashing point, the process of ignition is simple and certain. Iliis ingenious device gets rid of one of the chief defects in the ordinary motor engine; and a long series of exhaustive tests has convinced not onlv Diesel but many practical shipowners and shipbuilders, that he has actually solved the problem of substituting oil tor steam as a source of motive energy.

The advantages claimed for the oil motor as against the steam engine are many and obvious. It gets rid of the trouble of stoking, and so reduces the engine-room staff to a very small proportion, Coal space is saved, for the oil fuel can be stowed in tanks placed in any convenient part of the vessel; and as a ton of oil goes as far as three tons of coal, the radius of a vessel's action can be increased without encroaching on the space required for cargo or passengers. Further, the oil engine is cleaner- there are no ashes, and the burnt gas is simply carried away into the air clear of the decks, while the abolition of funnels leaves more deck room. But the decisive question as to the practical value of the new engine is of course that of cost. Taking present prices as a standard of comparison, the oil engine is said to be 50 per cent, cheaper than steam. But of course if oil is once generally adopted as fuel its price will certainly rise. Before 'the petrol motor was invented, petrol was thrown away at the oil refineries or sold at a nominal price. Its cost has risen from 2d to lOd a gallon or more in America, and very likely the heavy oils which are now cheap will follow the petrol precedent when once a strong demand for them sets in. And already the success of the Diesel engine is acknowledged in all European countries. One Dutch vessel driven by this engine haß travelled 7360 miles on. 83 tons of oil, a journey that would have needed at least five times that weight of coal to ! cover. In Italy, Diesel engines for vessels .have been built up to 1000 horsepower, and a warship is now under construction that is to be driven by oil enres of no less than 12,000-horse-pdwGr. England the progress of the new system has been slower t but Russia, which controls a large fraction of the world's oil supply, has taken up the Diesel engine enthusiastically. Already the new motor may foe truthfully said to have passed well beyond the experimental stage; and if oniy a small proportion of the prophecies of its admirers are verified we may expect that the conditions of marine transport and transit will be once more completely revolutionised within a very few years to come.