Starting fluid is a mixture of volatile hydrocarbons (heptane, butane or propane), diethyl ether, and carbon dioxide (as a propellant). It is often useful when starting direct injected diesel engines or lean burn spark engines running on alcohol fuel. Starting fluid works due to the low autoignition temperature of diethyl ether: 160 °C (320 °F)
Famous quotes containing the words starting and/or fluid:
“To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine! No doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)