Why cant gas cars use diesel and vice versa?
In: Technology
The fuels have different sets of properties that are utilised in different ways in each engine type.
For example diesel is highly compressible – to ignite it inside the engines cylinder all the engine does is compress it until it combusts.
Petrol burns much more easily, so if you put petrol in a diesel engine it will compress and ignite at the wrong point in the pistons movement which will cause problems – it may run, but it won’t run well.
A petrol engine works differently – to create the ignition it uses an electrical spark, which easily ignites the very flammable fuel vapour created by petrol. Diesel doesn’t evaporate so easily however, and it won’t burn so efficiently.
In theory you could tune each engine type to run better on the opposite fuels, but because you are picking the less efficient fuel for each job, it just won’t be able to run as efficiently.
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