Internal combustion machines

The Industrial Revolution came hand-in-hand with the use of fossil fuels. Although coal had been used for heating and in metallurgy since at least the thirteenth century, it was not until the invention and refinement of the steam engine that coal consumption increased greatly. By the middle of the nineteenth century, work done by machines exceeded the work done by animal power. While steam engines were mainly fueled by coal, the advent of the internal combustion engine required a volatile fuel, and petroleum distillates are perfectly suited for this purpose. 

Without these advances in hard, strong materials based on abundant, and therefore low-cost iron ore, there could have been no industrial revolution in the nineteenth century. Long bridges, sky-scraper buildings, steamships, railways, and more, needed pearlitic steel (low carbon) for their construction. Efficient steam engines, internal combustion engines, turbines, locomotives, various kinds of machine tools, and the like, became effective only when key components of them could be constructed of martensitic steels (medium carbon). 

Gauges are used to monitor the various conditions and performance of mechanical machines such as pumps and internal combustion engines, as well as to monitor the surrounding atmospheric conditions, which could indirectly affect a particular machine. 

The feasibility and limitations of molecular machines can hardly be emphasized any better than by Feynman s mixed message [1], namely that An internal combustion engine of molecular scale is impossible. Other chemical reactions, liberating energy when cold, can be used instead. Nanoscale machines, like their macroscopic counterparts, require power supplies of appropriate kinds and magnitudes for their functions. While macroscopic machines enjoy the simplicity of distinct active (ON) and inactive (OFF) states in the presence and absence of power supplies, respectively, molecular machines are in perpetual Brow-... 

IVhat are the possibilities of small hut movable machinesl... An internal combustion engine of molecular size is impossible. .. Other chemical reactions, liberating energy when cold, can be used instead. .. What would be the utility of such machines . 

Bio-oils have so far mainly been in the focus as an alternative fuel for internal combustion engines. The fuel obtained from fast pyrolysis, however, displays properties which do not lend themselves easily to this application. Intermittent combustion under high pressure in an reciprocating machine appears more demanding than continuous combustion under lower pressure in the combustion chamber of a gas turbine. This is the working assumption for the studies repotted below. 

Actuators that generate movements and forces, such as bending, expansion and contraction driven by stimulation of electrical, chemical, thermal and optical energies, are different from rotating machines such as electric motors and internal combustion engines. There are many sorts of soft actuators made of polymers [1-3], gels [4] and nanotubes [5]. Particularly, biomimetic actuators are interesting because of the application to artificial muscles that will be demanded for medical equipment, robotics and replacement of human muscle in the future. 

Human technology has been trying to reproduce those movements using electromagnetic motors, internal combustion devices, steam engines, or hydraulic devices. Any machine containing those motors... 

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