Distillation basically means to turn something into a vapor, and then to condense the vapor, to separate a part of the original from other. It's where the word "still" (as in "moonshine still") comes from, since distillation is used in producing some types of alcoholic beverages.
Various types of distillates serve as feedstocks for products ranging from lubricants up to diesel and heating oil. Kerosene inhabits a boundary area between light distillates and gasoline.
W-e-l-l, kinda...
Diesel fuel and kerosene (i.e. jet fuel) are both considered to be distillates.
So that's what "distillate" was. I've always wondered about that.
IIRC distillate was basically a left-over from the oil refining process, as so was very cheap to buy.
Yet another reason for distillate was that it was cheaper than gasoline. Many farm tractors from that era were set up to start on gasoline, but run on kerosene.
The early (i.e. pre ww1) submarines used spark ignition engines, with the switchover to diesels taking place just before the war (Chester Nimitz was the driving force for diesel in the USN). The distillate burning U-boats (e.g. the U-9) were known for their smoky exhaust.
Also keep in mind that diesel engines needed to be stronger for a given power due to the much higher compression ratio and the fuel injection needed for diesels required much finer tolerances than any of the components in a distillate engine.
- Erik
Distillate power plants became a favorite for gas-electric motor cars after a few rather spectacular gasoline fires in early gas-electric cars. A true diesel power plant for railroad operation was not quite there yet. Diesels had been proven in stationary power plants. The Burlington took a chance on powering the original Pioneer Zephyr with what amounted to the basic Winton design - easy to change back to distillate if diesel did not work out.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
Apparently, when UP ordered their first streamliner, the original design called for "a 600-hp V-12 Winton Model 191A, a distillate engine running at 1200 rpm."* Th UP chose the engine precisely because it was a proven design, even though Winton had just introduced the Model 201 diesel engine. Remember, this is the early 1930s. In 1933, CB&Q's Ralph Budd agreed to accept a pair of the Model 201 diesel engines in the proposed Zephyr.
At the time of the first streamliners, diesel engine technology still had a ways to go, and was not really perfected until the 1940s.
*J. Parker Lamb, Evolution of the American Diesel Locomotive, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007, pp 39-40. This is a good book on the development of the diesel.
Dan
The first streamliners are quite interesting, but my question is...
Why a distillate-fueled engine for the early streamliners? Seems to me that anything that could generate rotational energy to turn a generator would have worked. In the developmental timeframe of the midwar period, certainly reliable internal combustion engines already existed in a "ready to go" state, even something as simple as a modified auto/truck engine. Given the new design and engineering territory to be entered, wouldn't it have been simpler to have used a proven engine to eliminate a variable?
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