Heat Engines
Heat engines, including Stirling engines, are sealed machines using pistons within cylinders to transfer energy from a heat source to a colder reservoir, often using steam or another gas as the working substance. (See Carnot cycle.) The first illustration depicts a longitudinal section of a cylinder in a steam engine. The sliding part at the bottom is the piston, and the upper sliding part is a distribution valve (in this case of the D slide valve type) that directs steam alternately into either end of the cylinder. Refrigerator and air conditioner compressors are heat engines driven in reverse cycle as pumps.
Read more about this topic: Cylinder (engine)
Famous quotes containing the words heat and/or engines:
“Beware thoughts that come in the night. They aren’t turned properly; they come in askew, free of sense and restriction, deriving from the most remote of sources.”
—William Least Heat Moon [William Trogdon] (b. 1939)
“America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywheel and have a crankshaft that’s 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We’re in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good.”
—Thomas McGuane (b. 1939)