Oil Fuel For Petrol Engines

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 18922, 25 January 1936, Page 9

Oil Fuel For Petrol Engines

AFTER diilienlt and prolonged research, an Italian inventor ha.* evolved a new system of cnrburettion which makes il possible to employ heavy fuels in ordinary petrol engines. The novelty of his system is that the electric ignition is retained, and the charges arc not, as is the ease with the Diesel or compression-ignition engine, fired by li.igh compression, and the heavy fuel is not pre-heated by a "hot-spot," a iho,l employed by other inventors in the design of special canburet'tors suitable for oil fuels.

The theory on which the Castellini system is based is that if a heavy fuel is adequately "pulverised"— thai is to say. broken up into sufficiently fine particles—il will provide an elik-ieni mixture without the need for pro-heating or a very high compression ratio. A high-pressure pump driven by the engine of the ear forces the oil fuel through an , extremely fine jet. The pump mechanism is so designed that a constant pressure is maintained, and the finelyatomised fuel eniers ;in inlet passage and passes to the valve ports of the engine. Controls for regulating the throttle and mixture are also provided, i

It is claimed that experimental equipment has given encouraging results when fitted to the petrol engines of various standard makes of car, and that an improved apparatus which is rather inure complicated luus proved so efficient, that it might lie used with sports machines. The inventor believes that the process described is superior to Iboth com-pression-ignition and pre-l)C4iting, for the following reasons. If can be applied to normal spark-ignition units, and so avoids the disadvantage of the creator weight per horse-power wluell is characteristic of Diesels, although the thermal efficiency is not quite as high. It is necessary to have only a sinclc pump ami jet, ami the latter, unlike the individual jets of the com • pression-ignition engine, is not exposed to heat. When vaporisers are used for heavy fuel .the mixture is heated before entering the cylinders, and its density is consequently decreased, bill with the Castellini equipment tihero is no loss of volumetric efficiency; from lihal cause.