The Carnot engine and Rudolf Diesel[edit]

In 1892 Rudolf Diesel patented an internal combustion engine inspired by the Carnot engine. Diesel
knew a Carnot engine is an ideal that cannot be built, but he thought he had invented a working
approximation. His principle was unsound, but in his struggle to implement it he developed the
practical engine that bears his name.

The conceptual problem was how to achieve isothermal expansion in an internal combustion engine,
since burning fuel at the highest temperature of the cycle would only raise the temperature further.
Diesel's patented solution was: having achieved the highest temperature just by compressing the air,
to add a small amount of fuel at a controlled rate, such that heating caused by burning the fuel would
be counteracted by cooling caused by air expansion as the piston moved. Hence all the heat from
the fuel would be transformed into work during the isothermal expansion, as required by Carnot's
theorem.

For the idea to work a small mass of fuel would have to be burnt in a huge mass of air. Diesel first
proposed a working engine that would compress air to 250 atmospheres at 800 °C (1,450 °F), then
cycle to one atmosphere at 20 °C (50 °F). However, this was well beyond the technological
capabilities of the day, since it implied a compression ratio of 60:1. Such an engine, could it have
been built, would have had an efficiency of 73%. (In contrast, the best steam engines of his day
achieved 7%.)

Accordingly, Diesel sought to compromise. He calculated that, were he to reduce the peak pressure
to a less ambitious 90 atmospheres, he would sacrifice only 5% of the thermal efficiency. Seeking
financial support, he published the "Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Engine to Take the
Place of the Steam Engine and All Presently Known Combustion Engines" (1893). Endorsed by
scientific opinion, including Lord Kelvin, he won the backing of Krupp and Maschinenfabrik
Augsburg. He clung to the Carnot cycle as a symbol. But years of practical work failed to achieve an
isothermal combustion engine, nor could have done, since it requires such an enormous quantity of
air that it cannot develop enough power to compress it. Furthermore, controlled fuel injection turned
out to be no easy matter.

Even so, it slowly evolved over 25 years to become a practical high-compression air engine, its fuel
injected near the end of the compression stroke and ignited by the heat of compression, in a word,
the diesel engine. Today its efficiency is 40%.[8]