An external combustion engine (EC engine) is a heat engine where an (internal) working fluid is heated by combustion in an external source, through the engine wall or a heat exchanger. The fluid then, by expanding and acting on the mechanism of the engine, produces motion and usable work. The fluid is then cooled, compressed and reused (closed cycle), or (less commonly) dumped, and cool fluid pulled in (open cycle air engine).
Read more about External Combustion Engine: Combustion, Working Fluid
Famous quotes containing the words external, combustion and/or engine:
“Many are poets but without the name,
For what is poesy but to create
From overfeeling good or ill; and aim
At an external life beyond our fate,
And be the new Prometheus of new men.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The night has been unruly. Where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events,
New-hatched to the woeful time.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The will is never free—it is always attached to an object, a purpose. It is simply the engine in the car—it can’t steer.”
—Joyce Cary (1888–1957)