A catalytic converter requires that there be more precise control over the fuel/air mixture in order to control the amount of oxygen remaining in the exhaust gases. This change was dictated by the requirements of catalytic converters and not due to an inherent inefficiency of carburation. Unhappy with the car's performance and power, they re-designed the engine the following year using two horizontally-opposed cylinders and a newly designed wick carburetor.Ĭarburetors were the common method of fuel delivery for most US-made gasoline engines until the late 1980s when fuel injection became the preferred method. In 1896, Frederick and his brother built a petrol-driven car in England, a single-cylinder 5 hp (3.7 kW) internal combustion engine with chain drive. įrederick William Lanchester of Birmingham, England, experimented with the wick carburetor in cars. Hungarian engineers János Csonka and Donát Bánki patented a carburetor for a stationary engine in 1893. British courts rejected the Daimler company's claim of priority in favor of Edward Butler's 1884 spray carburetor used on his Petrol Cycle. The Daimler-Maybach carburetor was copied extensively, leading to patent lawsuits. In 1885, Wilhelm Maybach and Gottlieb Daimler developed a float carburetor based on the atomizer nozzle. Įarly carburetors were of the 'surface type', in which air is combined with fuel by passing air over the surface of gasoline. The first person to patent a carburetor for use in a petroleum engine was Siegfried Marcus with his 6 July 1872 patent for a device that mixes fuel with air.Ī carburetor was among the early patents by Karl Benz (1888) as he developed internal combustion engines and their components. The first carburetor was invented by the American engineer Samuel Morey in 1826. In fuel chemistry, the term has the more specific meaning of increasing the carbon (and therefore energy) content of a fluid by mixing it with a volatile hydrocarbon. Carburer means to combine with carbon (compare also carburizing). Ī more probable derivation is that the word carburetor comes from the French carbure meaning ' carbide'. The name (car-buretter) may refer to the small pipe (burette) that carries the fuel (by negative air pressure in a venturi) into the airstream entering the engine. Prior to that, they were called vaporizers, when intake air was passed over a surface of exposed fuel to pick up fuel vapors.

4.7 Icing and carburetor heat mechanismsĪmerican industrial literature of the late 1800s, even as late as 1912 (Audels) describes the fueling devices of gas engines as carburetters.

Carburator diagrams