No, diesels are not susceptible to detonation which is a non-applicable concept in its pure form. You want a diesel to burn the fuel wherever the fuel is, as soon as it is injected. The problem is to get it to burn fast enough.
Diesels do generate smoke from incomplete combustion as the air excess grows less. I imagine that a fair amount of smoke can be produced on without affecting efficiency much - but I don't *know*. All other things being equal, the leaner the mixture, the more efficient. The ideal is "air standard efficiency", heat with no fuel. In practice a diesel engine has to be designed for reliability at a certain power density/ mixture strength/BMEP (brake mean effective pressure) level, and if you go too much below this BMEP level, the mass of the moving engine components and the areas subject to friction, required by the designed maximum power, will start to impose excessive losses. The friction of the piston rings during compression and expansion even without combustion pressures, is also a source of loss, and there are other motoring (zero combustion operation as in turning over the engine with outside power) losses. Doug Woodard St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Zeke Yewdall wrote: > "One major way acceleration hurts is that engines are set to richen the > mixture during hard acceleration in order to prevent detonation > (knocking, pinging) at high cylinder pressures." > > Does this apply to diesel engines which almost always operate with > excess oxygen? > > _______________________________________________ > Biofuel mailing list > Biofuel@sustainablelists.org > http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org > > Biofuel at Journey to Forever: > http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html > > Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): > http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ > > _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
