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TIL about the simplest combustion engine (teapot engine)

6 days ago by gandalf_der_13te to c/til

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idk whether it's actually called that way. i was researching what is the simplest possible combustion engine, i.e. something that turns heat energy into mechanical energy. i stumbled across the newcomen engine which is said to be even simpler than the watt steam engine. however, even then, there were even simpler historical precedents. and one of them is depicted in the graphic that i made above. it's also described in the newcomen engine wikipedia article (section "Precursors").

next i'm gonna calculate the efficiency. it's somewhere around 5% actually, assuming operational pressure of 2 bar, which means 1 kWh of heat energy turns into 0.05 kWh of mechanical work. not thaat bad. i did a rough calculation already, now i'm gonna refine the formula.

Thorry 41 points 6 days ago

Never slop, why would you use an AI image here? There weren't enough images of teapots on the internet?

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OwOarchist 9 points 6 days ago

Maybe they image searched for a teapot, and they picked this one because they're bad at spotting AI images?

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gandalf_der_13te 3 points 6 days ago

the exact search query was "teapot steam" but otherwise, yeah

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OwOarchist 7 points 6 days ago

Okay, but in the future, try to avoid AI slop -- learn to recognize it.

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gandalf_der_13te -1 points 5 days ago

i won't let other people tell me what to do

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gandalf_der_13te 3 points 6 days ago

didn't check, picked the first i saw and liked

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tangeli 9 points 6 days ago

There are engines (devices that turn heat into mechanical energy) with no moving parts. That seems simpler to me.

pop pop boat

pulse jet engines

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theOneTrueSpoon 5 points 6 days ago

I'm no expert, but I feel like a teapot is probably simpler than a pulse jet

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tangeli 3 points 6 days ago

The teapot is but the turbine, not so much.

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infeeeee 7 points 6 days ago

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whaleross 5 points 6 days ago
  1. No it's not.
  2. Oh fuck off
  3. You could have just told OP about this politely and it was more a curiosity than an engine. The first known practical use was the kebab spinning engine several thousand years later.

OP, you probably already read https://en.wikipedia.org/... and https://en.wikipedia.org/...

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infeeeee 2 points 6 days ago
  1. OP edited the title after my comment, the "TIL" and the first few words were added later.
  2. For such a generic image they could just use some stock photo or something. I'm not fully anti ai, I know there are some actual reasonable usecases, but this is just slop and laziness. For example here are 1000s royalty free images of boiling kettles: https://pixabay.com/images/search/boiling kettle/
  3. English is not my first language, I didn't intended to have an impolite tone, in my head it sounded neutral

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gandalf_der_13te -6 points 6 days ago
  1. nope
  2. sry
  3. thanks but mine is simpler as it doesn't rely so much on moving parts. the aeolipile inherently needs to connect two parts that rotate against each other, while theoretically my engine can be operated without a turbine to create thrust directly through the recoil principle to drive a vehicle forward.

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infeeeee 2 points 6 days ago

You drew a turbine on the top, how it's simpler. If you just boil the water you can't use its power, you need some mechanism to convert it to mechanical force.

Interestingly airplane engines had a similar evolution. Early airplanes, before WW1 had rotary engines, where the full engine rotated with the propeller, similar to the Aeolipile. It was later developed to radial engine, where there is a drivetrain between the propeller and the engine.

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gandalf_der_13te 1 point 6 days ago

technically one doesn't even need a turbine to make the power useful. you could just use it like a rocket engine to exhaust backwards, to propel yourself forward through recoil.

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deHaga 6 points 6 days ago

A teapot is what you pour hot water from a kettle into to make tea...

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gandalf_der_13te 4 points 6 days ago

okay then i meant a kettle

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akunohana 1 point 6 days ago

Cool! I know the complexity of its design and operation are off the charts, but I recently learned how nuclear power plants work - or, at least the ones with boiling water reactors - and it's AMAZING. It's principally the same, except "fission and radioactive decay heats water" instead of "fire heats water".

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f314 2 points 5 days ago

All of them spin turbines! Some just heat other stuff than water, and then transfer that heat to water to spin the turbine.

I guess one exeption would be a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, but I don’t really think those count as power plants…

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