Cars today run on “gasoline” which has the hydrocarbons that work with the air and make the combustion possible, but why design engines like this, especially since the refining process is so arduous? Would it not have been easier and more logical to try using the crude oil straight from the Earth?
In: 16
No there are many reasons as to why gasoline was and still is used. The most significant is that, while crude oil is flammable, it is nowhere close to as flammable as gasoline and doesn’t burn nearly as fast and not very cleanly. Making a car engine operate on a slow burning fuel that leaves large amounts of residue behind would be an engineering nightmare.
Two main reasons. The first is that most crude oil isn’t explosive the way gasoline vapors are. Internal combustion engines need an explosion, and a pretty good one at that, to work. Certain types of crude can explode if conditions are right, but it’s a lot harder to make crude explode than to make some if its refined products explode.
Second reason is that crude oil will gunk up an engine right quick, and much more maintenance will be necessary for an engine that will work with crude compared to an engine designed to run on refined products.
Crude oil is not flammable enough. People made torches by dipping wood in crude, it barely burns better than wood.
The first engines use kerosene, which was available in the lab at low cost because it was used in lanterns. Then they found that a more volatile substance, gasoline, produced more power in the engine.
At the time of the invention of the automobile, gasoline was a mostly unused byproduct of producing kerosene which was used for heating and lamps.
There were several types of cars being manufactured in the early days, so the internal combustion engine was only one type. Oil is flammable and helped lubricate the moving parts, but the engines required “small” explosions (it is ELI5) in the piston chambers to drive the cars drive train, etc. oil did not provide that crucial capacity. The oil companies were already producing kerosine for home lighting so it was not arduous to further refine into gasoline, especially as electricity became the dominant source for home illumination
A common early internal combustion engine was the *hot bulb engine* which burnt (amongst other things) fuel oil – still not undistilled crude, but a heavier fraction than either petrol or diesel.
The problem with pure crude oil is that it is such a wide mix of fluids that no one burner can easily burn everything. The lightest fractions will explode, and the heaviest will just get burnt onto your combustion chamber. This had been worked out before the dawn of internal combustion engines by operators of steam engines.
Engines (at least internal combustion engines) work with explosions, not fire. They mix gasoline and air, compress it, and then add a spark, which creates an explosion that drives the piston. Crude oil simply isn’t explosive in the way that gasoline fumes are. Early engines used kerosene, which was OK, and some people experimented with an engine that used gunpowder. (You can imagine how well that worked out when the engine got hot.) Eventually, gasoline became the standard fuel, because it works.
You can, technically, use crude oil in a diesel engine, but it’s going to make a lot of really black smoke, and it will gum up the engine much faster than cleaner diesel fuel.
For an internal combustion engine to run effectively, the fuel needs to be a few things. It needs to be energy-dense, reliably combustible, but not too easily combustible for handling reasons, free-flowing, and clean-burning.
Gasoline checks all those boxes, despite it needing to go through the refining process. Some of the lighter distillates tend to be too volatile, and the heavier ones are too viscous or burn dirty and leave engine deposits. Crude is a mix of all of them, so it can burn too fast AND too slow for an engine, burn dirty, be too viscous to handle/pump easily. It’s kinda the worst of all worlds when it comes to fuels.
Originally it’s because gasoline was cheap.
The first uses for oil was kerosene as a replacement for whale oil in lamps, tar to replace that made from trees, and paraffin wax. Those are the heavier things in the oil and all the lighter stuff like methane, propane, and gasoline was mostly either burned off or just dumped.
Gasoline is easier to vaporize and burn than heavy fuels like kerosene. That means it was a natural choice to fuel the small engines in early cars, and the oil companies were happy to collect and sell something they used to throw away.
At the end of the 19th century, catalytic cracking was developed which let us split the tars and waxes into liquid fuels and production of gasoline and diesel fuel really took off.
Undistilled crude oil is not very combustible since it contains asphalt. Lighter distillates like acetone are too flammable and prone to accidental explosion. Gasoline is stable enough not to explode without an open flame, but volatile enough to combust near an open flame.
Some very large industrial fuel engines could run on straight up crude, but they would seize after prolonged use due to the present asphalt. Engines dont like asphalt.
Cars today run on “gasoline” which has the hydrocarbons that work with the air and make the combustion possible, but why design engines like this, especially since the refining process is so arduous? Would it not have been easier and more logical to try using the crude oil straight from the Earth?
In: 16
No there are many reasons as to why gasoline was and still is used. The most significant is that, while crude oil is flammable, it is nowhere close to as flammable as gasoline and doesn’t burn nearly as fast and not very cleanly. Making a car engine operate on a slow burning fuel that leaves large amounts of residue behind would be an engineering nightmare.
Two main reasons. The first is that most crude oil isn’t explosive the way gasoline vapors are. Internal combustion engines need an explosion, and a pretty good one at that, to work. Certain types of crude can explode if conditions are right, but it’s a lot harder to make crude explode than to make some if its refined products explode.
Second reason is that crude oil will gunk up an engine right quick, and much more maintenance will be necessary for an engine that will work with crude compared to an engine designed to run on refined products.
Crude oil is not flammable enough. People made torches by dipping wood in crude, it barely burns better than wood.
The first engines use kerosene, which was available in the lab at low cost because it was used in lanterns. Then they found that a more volatile substance, gasoline, produced more power in the engine.
At the time of the invention of the automobile, gasoline was a mostly unused byproduct of producing kerosene which was used for heating and lamps.
There were several types of cars being manufactured in the early days, so the internal combustion engine was only one type. Oil is flammable and helped lubricate the moving parts, but the engines required “small” explosions (it is ELI5) in the piston chambers to drive the cars drive train, etc. oil did not provide that crucial capacity. The oil companies were already producing kerosine for home lighting so it was not arduous to further refine into gasoline, especially as electricity became the dominant source for home illumination
A common early internal combustion engine was the *hot bulb engine* which burnt (amongst other things) fuel oil – still not undistilled crude, but a heavier fraction than either petrol or diesel.
The problem with pure crude oil is that it is such a wide mix of fluids that no one burner can easily burn everything. The lightest fractions will explode, and the heaviest will just get burnt onto your combustion chamber. This had been worked out before the dawn of internal combustion engines by operators of steam engines.
Engines (at least internal combustion engines) work with explosions, not fire. They mix gasoline and air, compress it, and then add a spark, which creates an explosion that drives the piston. Crude oil simply isn’t explosive in the way that gasoline fumes are. Early engines used kerosene, which was OK, and some people experimented with an engine that used gunpowder. (You can imagine how well that worked out when the engine got hot.) Eventually, gasoline became the standard fuel, because it works.
You can, technically, use crude oil in a diesel engine, but it’s going to make a lot of really black smoke, and it will gum up the engine much faster than cleaner diesel fuel.
For an internal combustion engine to run effectively, the fuel needs to be a few things. It needs to be energy-dense, reliably combustible, but not too easily combustible for handling reasons, free-flowing, and clean-burning.
Gasoline checks all those boxes, despite it needing to go through the refining process. Some of the lighter distillates tend to be too volatile, and the heavier ones are too viscous or burn dirty and leave engine deposits. Crude is a mix of all of them, so it can burn too fast AND too slow for an engine, burn dirty, be too viscous to handle/pump easily. It’s kinda the worst of all worlds when it comes to fuels.
Originally it’s because gasoline was cheap.
The first uses for oil was kerosene as a replacement for whale oil in lamps, tar to replace that made from trees, and paraffin wax. Those are the heavier things in the oil and all the lighter stuff like methane, propane, and gasoline was mostly either burned off or just dumped.
Gasoline is easier to vaporize and burn than heavy fuels like kerosene. That means it was a natural choice to fuel the small engines in early cars, and the oil companies were happy to collect and sell something they used to throw away.
At the end of the 19th century, catalytic cracking was developed which let us split the tars and waxes into liquid fuels and production of gasoline and diesel fuel really took off.
Undistilled crude oil is not very combustible since it contains asphalt. Lighter distillates like acetone are too flammable and prone to accidental explosion. Gasoline is stable enough not to explode without an open flame, but volatile enough to combust near an open flame.
Some very large industrial fuel engines could run on straight up crude, but they would seize after prolonged use due to the present asphalt. Engines dont like asphalt.
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