Earliest Possible Internal Combustion Engines?

How soon can an internal combustion engine be built, assuming a POD of no earlier than 1000 AD? Was metallurgy of the Renaissance up to the task? Could petroleum be refined, or ethanol processed significantly before it was IOTL, and preferably before 1700? Or can we go with a gunpowder-burning engine, as was proposed by Huygens in the 17th century for Versailles? Would any of these be feasible?
 
In an age without anything to compete with it, even a crude and highly inefficient IC engine might possibly find uses. The question is, can something different do its job better?

Steam engines are an obvious competition; also air engines. People messing around with things we might call some kind of IC engine would probably not care so much about which sort of engine they are making as much as making something that accomplishes some job well enough, and better than the alternatives.

If they are just medieval alchemist types fooling around with things that go bang, their products will be pretty crude. If they have some degree of grasp of basic theory (even theory that is wildly off by our modern standards, as long as it evolved to give practical results in some field it will probably offer something somewhat serviceable extrapolated to something related) they won't be restricting themselves to the category of what we'd call IC, they'd apply the theories to the whole range of possible choices.
 
How soon can an internal combustion engine be built, assuming a POD of no earlier than 1000 AD? Was metallurgy of the Renaissance up to the task? Could petroleum be refined, or ethanol processed significantly before it was IOTL, and preferably before 1700? Or can we go with a gunpowder-burning engine, as was proposed by Huygens in the 17th century for Versailles? Would any of these be feasible?
I'd say that if successful cannon can be manufactured, then stationary IC engines can be built.

I was just doing some research on early IC engines; fuels I found used were hydrogen (de Rivaz and Lenoir), vapors of turpentine (Morey), and coal dust (Niepce, they also tried dried moss spores). I think methane may have been mentioned, too. That's all Internet knowledge, so take with a grain of salt.

As for gunpowder, I have heard that the rate of expansion is too fast to be useful. I don't remember more about that, sadly.
 
Well - OTL the IC engine was developed in the 1820's. [Whe have a very Good TL on this site about it]
To get much earlier than that - Whe will need a earlier development of Electricity.
 

Paul MacQ

Monthly Donor
LOL yes I looked at this wiki

Christiaan Huygens "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Huygens"
In 1673, Huygens carried out experiments with internal combustion. Although he designed a basic form of internal combustion engine, fueled by gunpowder, he never successfully built one.

and from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_internal_combustion_engine

* 1807: Nicéphore Niépce installed his 'moss, coal-dust and resin' fuelled Pyréolophore internal combustion engine in a boat and powered up the river Saône in France. A patent was subsequently granted by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte on 20 July 1807.
* 1807: Swiss engineer François Isaac de Rivaz built an internal combustion engine powered by a hydrogen and oxygen mixture, and ignited by electric spark. (See 1780's: Alessandro Volta above.) [4]

* 1823: Samuel Brown patented the first internal combustion engine to be applied industrially. It was compressionless and based on what Hardenberg calls the "Leonardo cycle," which, as the name implies, was already out of date at that time
 
The problem with an engine powered by gunpowder is the second element of the word: "powder". As shown on an episode of Mythbusters, there is no easy way to get the right amount of fuel into the combustion chamber each time at the speed required.

For fuels, you're going to be stuck with liquids and gases.
 
And as I originally said, you have to ask, "why is internal combustion a better option at this particular time, for this particular task?" It is one thing to have an engine that sort of runs, it is another to find a niche for it where this type of engine is superior to others. IC engines OTL found their niche first of all as motors for automobiles and boats; clearly the main thing was to have a reasonably handy, responsive, not-too-heavy engine that could deliver the power required and could handle a variation in power demand quickly. An IC engine that good required late 19th century technology.

I believe Diesel's first compression-ignition engines were very different, they were gigantic things intended for stationary power generation and he was indeed hoping to make the thing work on coal dust. The thing is the diesels did not so much find their niche in such applications as in boat propulsion and eventually big heavy motor vehicles.

Diesel was hoping his engine would become widely used in part because he was able to achieve a fair efficiency with his huge slow version. This is because IC engines in general can achieve efficiency because of high compression ratios which correspond to very high combustion temperatures; high temperature (attainable because the engine, be it spark ignition or compression, is only at the very high temperature for a moment, then the gas expands and cools, so the cylinder only needs to handle peak temperatures momentarily and therefore that peak can be hotter than available metals can stand on a sustained basis) gives the prospect of higher efficiency according to Carnot's principles.

Again though, this advantage of IC engines can only be attained with fairly sophisticated ones. There's no magic that says that just because my engine runs on explosions of fuel in the cylinder and yours is a steam or stirling or something like that, mine will therefore be better! In the early 19th century steam was clearly the way to go.
 
This is my first post please be gentle.

From what I understand internal combustion engines(if you are speaking of the reciprocatingpiston kind) require three things;
1. Precise timing of the combustion within the camber (difficult but not impossible with extensive experimentation)
2. A ignition method such as a sparkplug (here lies the problem in my opinion, for a internal combustion engine to exist as soon as possible you need a alternative to a sparkplug in that it relies on an electrical ignition of fuel)
3. Fuel, without a viable feul source and a way to regulate it the engine is a peice of modern art

Ethanol can be distilled and filtered to be a poor but none the less workable fuel
As for the ignition issues my only suggestion for a alternative is a seperate lamp heating a copper wire leading into the combustion chamber as such having a constantly heated wire requiring a alternate fuel injection method
 
I should add, that I am not an attority in the matter so if you have information that proves my post ill informed please correct me.
there is enough misinformation in this world.:)
 
This is really a twin problem - technology and science.

The technology for making an internal combustion engine is available fairly early, as long as you are willing to put up with one that doesn't actually do terribly much worthwhile. You will not get much power from it, and it won't work terribly reliably. But you can make a machine with properly sealed pistons and a working fuel injection, and either use the diesel process or an electric spark from a lead-acid battery for ignition, withthetechnoloigy of thwe ancient world. You'll probably have ahard time finding the concentration of skill required anywhere but in great cultural centres before 1700, but a group of highly qualifioed instrumentmakers, goldmiths, sculptors and/or locksmiths from imperial Rome, Abbasid Baghdad, Song-dynasty Guangzhou, Renaissance Florence or Golden Age Amsterdam could make you one.

The problem is that nobody would understand exactly HOW. They could do it, but prior to a proper understanding of the behaviour of gases and the possibilities of electicity, nobody knows what to do or why to do it. ICEs are complicated in a way that steam engines are not. They work with temnperatures and speeds as a baseline that need sophisticated metallurgy and machining skills. You can't blow up a fuel-air mix any slower. Without experience with things operating at these speeds - like high-end steam engines - the learning process would be terribly discouraging. Which is why I am relatively sure that while an internal combustion engine could be built at almostany point after 1000, the likelihood of it being developed independently before 1800 is minuscule.
 
Something I feel I should point out, lead-acid batteries weren't invented until 1859, but non-rechargeable batteries were invented in 1800 (Voltaic pile), discounting the Baghdad battery of course.

Speculating ignorantly here, but I wonder if something couldn't be worked out with Leyden jars or an early electrostatic generator.

I was going to speculate a little more and realized I'd almost reinvented the hot tube igntion system. In short, a tube is set where we'd expect the spark plug to be. A flame is directed on this tube to heat it up. Fuel is injected into the cylinder until enough makes its way to the hot part of the tube which initiates combustion. The flame is moved to where needed to best time ignition. Real, for true, old-school tech for you there, no batteries needed. Used until the 1910s, as best as I can tell without intensive research, which I might. I think mostly for stationary engines, but I seem to remember that some very early cars used it.
 

evb

Banned
Several, more historical oriented notes:
Without experience with things operating at these speeds - like high-end steam engines - the learning process would be terribly discouraging.
1. A steam powered engine was made in ancient Greece.
2. The Alexandria library was burned down several times. We have no way of knowing what type of other things may have been in use.
3. How fast must a ICE be? I can imagine one that would be very slow, for cranes for example.
4. An economy like the roman one would have the incentive to push for an industrial revolution if technology makes it possible.
Ethanol can be distilled and filtered to be a poor but none the less workable fuel
As for the ignition issues my only suggestion for a alternative is a seperate lamp heating a copper wire leading into the combustion chamber as such having a constantly heated wire requiring a alternate fuel injection method
5. They would have a fuel, and an egnition system can work like this:
You have a burning fire, that doesn't stop. It comes in and out of contact with the combustion chamber and can continue burning for the next turn. Right?
 
The Arab inventor Al Jazari devised a form of reciprocating engine so possibly around 1200 and the oil was there in the ground although extracting it may have been difficult as would refining it. It doesn't seem to have had the history that the steam engine did.
 
Several, more historical oriented notes:

1. A steam powered engine was made in ancient Greece.

An apparatus that used jets of directed steam to produce rotation was produced in Roman Egypt.

2. The Alexandria library was burned down several times. We have no way of knowing what type of other things may have been in use.

Plenty of things may have been in use that the Museion never knew of. Nonetheless, an internal combustion engine is not likely because a) we have surviving accounts of 'miracle technology' that don't mention anything like it and b) unlike the aeolipile, it would have been useful, thus unlikely to be entirely forgotten.

3. How fast must a ICE be? I can imagine one that would be very slow, for cranes for example.

ICEs are fast because the explosion of their fuel has a certain baseline acceleration. In order to produce useful torque, they are usually hitched to a gearbox. That means to produce a useful ICE, you need gears that can take the speed at which the piston works (the speed of the expanding gas minus the machinery's resistance) and turn it into a manageable rpm. It's not technically a difficult thing to do, but you need very strong and precise gears. That was doable at the tech level of Rome, but not many people had the ability because it wasn't really a needed skill.

4. An economy like the roman one would have the incentive to push for an industrial revolution if technology makes it possible.

I'd agree with you here, but that is far from universal consensus. The problem is, of course, that preindustrial people don't know what an industrial society looks like. They aren't pushing for industrial revolution, just making stuff that they think will work. Whatcanyou offer the Romans that will work for them - cost-effective, easy to use, and available here and now? I suspect not too much beyond what they had.

5. They would have a fuel, and an egnition system can work like this:
You have a burning fire, that doesn't stop. It comes in and out of contact with the combustion chamber and can continue burning for the next turn. Right?

I suspect it's a bit more complicated than that. Ignition chambers operate under pretty high pressure. But I suppose it would be possible. Again, I also suspect it will require a decent understanding of the behaviour of gases under pressure and thermodynamics, though.
 
Carlton_bach shot down your points extremely effectively, but I've a few things to add.

Several, more historical oriented notes:
1. A steam powered engine was made in ancient Greece.
That was a glorified toy. Comparing it to an ICE is like mistaking a dreidel for a gyroscope. While a much better design can be produced, the efficiency of escaping steam just isn't high enough to do any real work.

5. They would have a fuel, and an egnition system can work like this:
You have a burning fire, that doesn't stop. It comes in and out of contact with the combustion chamber and can continue burning for the next turn. Right?

A combustion chamber is by definition closed, to contain the explosion and channel the force exerted elsewhere. If you are suggesting having a closed chamber that swings over a heat source(flame) to initiate ignition, you're vastly overestimating the speed of heat conduction. Heating up a chamber from the outside to the point where the contents explode takes a long time. Even with thin metal and a highly explosive fuel source. A tank of propane sat on an open fire takes about eight minutes to explode.

To get any sort of quick ignition, you'd have to keep the chamber itself at just below the ignition temperature so that the heat source could push it over each time (still would be slow). The problem with this is that heated metal loses strength. That's why you heat it to shape and forge it. Having your ignition chamber be red hot would mean weakening the very thing you need stong enough to contain the explosion. A recipe for disaster.


Heat is an engine's enemy. Without proper cooling, it will fail.
 
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