An external combustion engine (EC engine) is a heat engine where an (internal) working fluid is heated by combustion in an external source, through the engine wall or a heat exchanger. The fluid then, by expanding and acting on the mechanism of the engine, produces motion and usable work. The fluid is then cooled, compressed and reused (closed cycle), or (less commonly) dumped, and cool fluid pulled in (open cycle air engine).
Read more about External Combustion Engine: Combustion, Working Fluid
Famous quotes containing the words external, combustion and/or engine:
“Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“The night has been unruly. Where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events,
New-hatched to the woeful time.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There is a small steam engine in his brain which not only sets the cerebral mass in motion, but keeps the owner in hot water.”
—Unknown. New York Weekly Mirror (July 5, 1845)