Course: BFM 202 Biodiesel Production

Lecture

Rudolf Diesel and His Diesel Engine
Credits
BFM 202 Biodiesel Production Unit 1 Reading has been adapted from "ENGY 131 Unit 1 Commentary: What is biodiesel?" by Southeastern Illinois College.

ENGY 131 Biodiesel Production course content by Southeastern Illinois College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Except where indicated otherwise.

Rudolf Diesel and His Diesel Engine

"The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem

insignificant today. But such oils may become in the course of

time as important as the petroleum and coal tar products of the

present time." Rudolf Diesel, 1912

As early as 1853, two scientists by the names of E. Duffy and J. Patrick
were successfully experimenting on the transesterification of a
vegetable into fuel. The use of vegetable oils for fuel continued and
peanut oil was the fuel for Rudolf Diesel's revolutionary engine of 1893.

Parisian-born Rudolf Diesel was born in 1858 to Bavarian immigrants. He
graduated from the Munich Polytechnic then went to work as a
refrigerator engineer even though his first passion was engine design.
During his studies in thermodynamics, he learned that only 6-10% of a
steam engine's fuel is actually converted to work. It was then that
Rudolf began pondering an idea to improve the work efficiency of
thermodynamic conversion based upon the Carnot Cycle.

Diesel designed a solar-powered air engine, several heat engines, and in
1893 published "The Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Engine"
which described piston-driven, compressed-air engine that ran on peanut
and hemp oil.

One of his earlier heat engines was fueled by powdered coal. An
explosion of that fuel channeled his experimentation toward fuel derived
from vegetable oils.

His patent for the diesel engine was filed in 1894 when he had proven that
fuel could be ignited without a spark. In 1897 he had built his first
successful engine. This highly efficient engine was unveiled at the 1911
World's Fair in Paris and his knowledge of engine design and fuels
became highly sought after.

In September of 1913, Rudolf Diesel boarded a steamer in Antwerp on his
way to London to meet with the Consolidated Diesel Manufacturing Company
to discuss the sale of his newly patented engine design to the British.
He disappeared during that voyage. Ten days later his son identified
belongings from a corpse found floating in the sea. The mystery of
Rudolf Diesel's disappearance remains. It is known that prior to his
trip, he left his wife a bag with instructions to open it at a later
date. The bag was full of cash in the form of German marks.

Some believe his death a suicide, others believe a conspiracy involving
the Germans who had just introduced the submarine diesel U-boat and
wanted to ensure the UK did not gain the same technology. Regardless, he
left the world a legacy of power.

Not incidentally, it is around this same time that the petroleum
industry determined how to derive diesel off its gasoline distillation
columns and create a cheap, petroleum-based fuel.