Diesel engines operate similarly to gasoline engines but there are also some distinct differences between the two. One difference between gas and diesel engines is the presence or absence of a carburetor. How come diesel engines don’t have a carburetor like gas-powered engines?
Diesel engines don’t need a carburetor because carburetors mix fuel and air to ignite spark combustion engines. However, diesel engines don’t use spark combustion. Instead, they use pressure and heat to facilitate diesel combustion. Therefore carburetors aren’t needed in diesel engines.
Keep reading for an in-depth look into how diesel engines operate without carburetors. This article will first examine the precise function of the carburetor, then explore what else is used in diesel cars. By the end of this piece, you’ll have a better insight into the mechanics of diesel engines and how they differ from gasoline engines.
What Do Diesel Engines Use Instead of Carburetors?
Before we delve into how diesel engines can function without using a carburetor, let’s take a detailed look at what diesel engines use instead. So, what does a diesel engine use as an alternative to carburetors?
Diesel engines use fuel injectors instead of carburetors. Diesel engines don’t require carburetors to function. Instead, a fuel injector pumps fuel into the cylinder, which is compressed. The fuel injector may even be placed in the exact location where a carburetor would be found in gas engines.
Fuel injectors spray most of the fuel into the cylinders in a diesel engine as you push the accelerator in the vehicle. The fuel is then compressed and warmed. In turn, this triggers a combustion within the cylinder. Fuel injectors are highly effective and efficient, making them very popular, even in gas-powered cars.
What Does a Carburetor Do?
To better understand why diesel engines don’t use a carburetor, it’s helpful to know what a carburetor does, precisely. So, what does a carburetor do?
A carburetor creates a mixture of air and fuel suitable for spark combustion. This mixture is then placed into the cylinder of the spark combustion engine, where a spark plug ignites it, triggering combustion. Carburetors are primarily used in gasoline engines and not in diesel engines.
A carburetor is an essential aspect of a spark combustion engine. A carburetor controls the ratio of air to fuel in an engine before it’s fed into the cylinder. This mixture is alternate as the engine accelerates as different variations of air to fuel mixtures provide faster or slower combustion in the engine (source).
The carburetor is connected to the accelerator, allowing the driver to control how much fuel enters the cylinders at any one time—allowing the driver to control the engine’s power output. However, not all engines need carburetors to operate.
How Does Fuel Ignite in a Diesel Engine?
Having a general idea about the differences in combustion between diesel and gasoline engines and how diesel engines operate overall helps to fully understand why a carburetor isn’t needed. So, how does fuel ignite inside the cylinders of a diesel engine?
Fuel ignites in a diesel engine after being pumped into cylinders, where it gets compressed and heated. In a gasoline engine, fuel is mixed with air and exposed to a spark to ignite fuel. Diesel engines also use heat and pressure, which is why they have different parts than gas engines.
Since diesel engines don’t need a spark to ignite fuel in the engine, the diesel engine doesn’t contain spark plugs. On top of this, the diesel engine doesn’t rely on a carburetor to supply fuel for combustion. This is because carburetors pump fuel and air designed to be ignited with a spark, not compressed into combustion.
Are Carburetors Used in Modern Gasoline Cars?
Carburetors won’t be found in diesel engines. Instead, you’ll find a carburetor in a traditional gasoline engine. However, gas-powered cars have changed rapidly in the past few decades, with people often left wondering how modern cars operate. So, are carburetors still used in modern cars?
Carburetors aren’t used in modern gasoline cars. Modern cars use computerized fuel injection systems that pump fuel and air into the cylinder for combustion. Carburetors were used in cars for over a century. However, modern vehicles longer use this part as it produces inferior results.
One of the main reasons for the decline in the popularity of carburetors is the demand for improved energy efficiency in vehicles. Fuel injection has become much more energy-efficient, making the engine cheaper to run and less harmful to the environment.
Carburetors also offer less power and poorer performance when compared to fuel injection systems. As a result, carburetors have become obsolete in modern production vehicles and have been phased out since the early 90s in production vehicles (source).
However, you can still find new engines that operate using carburetors. Small engines like leaf blowers, lawnmowers, and motorcycles all use carburetors to operate. However, you would find it hard to find these pieces in any larger modern engine.
While carburetors were used in gasoline engines in the past, diesel engines never operated using carburetors. Instead, diesel engines have always worked using a fuel injection system. However, in recent years, fuel injection systems have become the standard due to their superiority in almost every way compared to a carburetor.
Final Thoughts
Diesel engines operate without using carburetors because they’re made differently than modern gasoline engines. Carburetors are used to mix fuel and air for ignition from a spark, but diesel engines generate combustion using pressure, not a spark. As a result, you won’t find any spark plugs in a diesel engine.
Diesel engines operate using fuel injection. Fuel injectors pump a mix of fuel and air directly into cylinders in the engine. This provides the vehicle with efficient and high-performance output from its engine. As a result, even gasoline cars have switched from carburetors to fuel injection systems in recent years.