Rudolf Diesel, Diesel Engine & SS Dresden

March 18, 1858 - birthday of Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel, a German inventor and mechanical engineer, famous for the invention of the diesel engine, and for his mysterious death.

Diesel was born to Bavarian parents who were immigrants living in Paris. His father was a bookbinder by trade. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, his family left Paris and settled in London. Diesel's mother sent 12-year-old Rudolf to Augsburg to live with his aunt and uncle to become fluent in German and to visit the Königliche Kreis-Gewerbeschule (Royal Circle Vocational College), where his uncle taught mathematics.

At the age of 14, Diesel wrote a letter to his parents saying that he wanted to become an engineer. After finishing his basic education at the top of his class in 1873, he enrolled at the newly founded Industrial School of Augsburg. Two years later, he received a merit scholarship from the Royal Bavarian Polytechnic of Munich, which he accepted against the wishes of his parents, who would rather have seen him start to work.

Royal Bavarian Polytechnic of Munich which was later rechristened as Technical University of Munich (TUM). TUM is ranked 4th overall in Reuters 2017 European Most Innovative University ranking. TUM's alumni include 17 Nobel laureates, 18 Leibniz Prize winners and 22 IEEE Fellow Members

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Munich

One of Diesel's professors in Munich was Carl von Linde. Diesel graduated in January 1880 with highest academic honours and returned to Paris, where he assisted his former Munich professor, Carl von Linde, with the design and construction of a modern refrigeration and ice plant. Diesel became the director of the plant one year later. While Diesel continued to work for Linde, gaining numerous patents in both Germany and France. He later moved to Berlin to assume management of Linde's corporate research and development department.

Carl Paul Gottfried Linde was a German scientist, engineer, and businessman. He discovered a refrigeration cycle and invented the first industrial-scale air separation and gas liquefaction processes. These breakthroughs laid the backbone for the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics won by Kamerlingh Onnes.

As he was not allowed to use the patents he developed while an employee of Linde's for his own purposes, he expanded beyond the field of refrigeration. He first worked with steam and his research (research into thermal efficiency and fuel efficiency) led him to build a steam engine using ammonia vapour. During tests, however, the engine exploded and almost killed him. He spent many months in a hospital, followed by health and eyesight problems.

He then began designing an engine based on the Carnot cycle and published a treatise entitled Theorie und Konstruktion eines rationellen Wärmemotors zum Ersatz der Dampfmaschine und der heute bekannten Verbrennungsmotoren (Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Engine to Replace the Steam Engine and The Combustion Engines Known Today) which formed the basis for his work on and invention of the diesel engine. This was just after Karl Benz was granted a patent for his invention of the motor car in 1886.

US Patent documents of the Diesel Engine

Diesel observed that as much as 90% of the energy available in the fuel is wasted in a steam engine and his work in engine design was driven by the goal of much higher efficiency ratios. Eventually, he obtained a patent for his design for a compression-ignition engine. In his engine, fuel was injected at the end of compression and the fuel was ignited by the high temperature resulting from compression.

On the evening of 29 September 1913, Diesel boarded the GER steamer Dresden in Antwerp on his way to a meeting of the Consolidated Diesel Manufacturing company in London. He took dinner on board the ship and then retired to his cabin at about 10 pm, leaving word to be called the next morning at 6:15 am; but he was never seen alive again. His death continues to be a mystery till this day.

SS Dresden - a British passenger ship which operated from 1897 to 1915; she is known as the place of the 1913 disappearance of German engineer Rudolf Diesel

The diesel engine underwent much development after Diesel's death and became a very important replacement for the steam piston engine in many applications. The diesel engine was widely used as stationary engines, agricultural machines, submarines, ships, and much later, locomotives, trucks, and in modern automobiles.

The diesel engine has the benefit of running more fuel-efficiently than gasoline engines due to much higher compression ratios and longer duration of combustion, which means the temperature rises more slowly, allowing more heat to be converted to mechanical work.

Diesel was interested in using coal dust or vegetable oil as fuel, and in fact, his engine was run on peanut oil.

Rudolf Diesel on a German postage stamp

Sources -

1. Diesel: The Man and the Engine by Morton Grosser
2. Wikipedia