Petrol Engines

[wellandpower]

Petrol Engines
The most commonly used source of power for generators because of the high volume market in the smaller sizes. Introduced by the German engineers Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz in 1885. The petrol engine is a complex piece of machinery made up of about 150 moving parts. It is a reciprocating piston engine, in which a number of pistons move up and down in cylinders. Petrol and air is introduced to the space above the pistons and ignited. The gases produced force the pistons down, generating power. The engine-operating cycle is repeated every four strokes (upward or downward movement) of the piston, this being known as the four-stroke cycle. The motion of the pistons rotate a crankshaft, at the end of which is a heavy flywheel. From the flywheel the power is transferred to the alternator, usually via a direct coupling arrangement.

The parts of the petrol engine can be subdivided into a number of systems.

Fuel system
Pumps fuel from the petrol tank into the carburettor. There it mixes with air and is sucked into the engine cylinders. (With electronic fuel injection, it goes directly from the tank into the cylinders by way of an electronic monitor.)

Ignition system

Supplies the sparks to ignite the fuel mixture in the cylinders. By means of an ignition coil and contact breaker, it boosts the 12-volt battery voltage to pulses of 18,000 volts or more. These go via a distributor to the spark plugs in the cylinders, where they create the sparks. (Electronic ignitions replace these parts.) Ignition of the fuel in the cylinders produces temperatures of 700°C/1,300°F or more, and the engine must be cooled to prevent overheating.

Cooling System

Most engines have a water-cooling system, in which water circulates through channels in the cylinder block, thus extracting the heat. It flows through pipes in a radiator, which are cooled by fan-blown air. A few cars and most motorcycles are air-cooled, the cylinders being surrounded by many fins to present a large surface area to the air.

Lubrication system

This also reduces some heat, but its main job is to keep the moving parts coated with oil, which is pumped under pressure to the camshaft, crankshaft, and valve-operating gear.
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Charlie Farrow

[juniorlep]

is there any safe environment generators, or which one diesel or petrol be safer for the enviroment?

[wellandpower]

Generators in both diesel and petrol forms release CO2 which will damage the environment. Petrol generators are limited in size; mainly to the small sizes up to around 10kVA. So above this level diesel is your only real option. Diesel releases more energy per liter than petrol - hence why diesel cars get a higher mileage for a given amount of fuel than petrol.

Neither of these forms is very environmentally sound.

Options include converting to gas (which combusts better, is cheaper but also releases CO2), but gas engines have a lower power rating, so a bigger more expensive engine is needed to produce the same level of kVA.

Diesel engines were initially designed to be run on peanut oil for use in the 3rd world. Diesel took over due to the fact that there was an abundance of oil in the world. Just like diesel cars, with the correct conversions it may be possible to run an engine on a range of natural vegetable oils. Peanut oil is ideal due to its high viscosity, but rape seed oil or even sunflower oil could be used in warm conditions, or if specially heated first. The main reason why people do not run engines on vegetable oil is because of the cost; around 50pence per liter compared to as little as 30pence per litre in some areas.

Hope that is a good enough answer!

[Fleelovef]

They are fairly smooth for the most part. Mine and a friends every fifteen seconds does a shake. But other then that it is fairly smooth but not nearly as smooth as inline engines IMO.

[wellandpower]

Every 15 seconds?

That seems quite a regular interval to do it? How big a set it it?