Combustion - History, Modern Theory, Combustion Mechanics, Applications, Environmental Issues
chemical
Combustion is the chemical term for a process known more commonly as burning. It is certainly one of the earliest chemical changes noted by humans, at least partly because of the dramatic effects it has on materials. Today, the mechanism by which combustion takes place is well understood and is more correctly defined as a form of oxidation that occurs so rapidly that noticeable heat and light are produced.
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Probably the earliest reasonably scientific attempt to explain combustion was that of Johannes (or Jan) Baptista van Helmont, a Flemish physician and alchemist who lived from 1580 to 1644. Van Helmont observed the relationship among a burning material, smoke and flame and said that combustion involved the escape of a "wild spirit" (spiritus silvestre) from the burning material. This …
As with so many other instances in science, the phlogiston theory fell into disrepute only when someone appeared on the scene who could reject traditional thinking almost entirely and propose a radically new view of the phenomenon. That person was the great French chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794). Having knowledge of some recent critical discoveries in chemistry, especially the discov…
Humans have been making practical use of combustion for millennia. Cooking food and heating homes have long been two major applications of the combustion reaction. With the development of the steam engine by Denis Papin, Thomas Savery, Thomas Newcomen, and others at the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, a new use for combustion was found: performing work. Those first engines employed t…
The use of combustion as a power source has had such a dramatic influence on human society that the period after 1750 has sometimes been called the Fossil Fuel Age. Still, the widespread use of combustion for human applications has always had its disadvantages. Pictorial representations of England during the Industrial Revolution, for example, usually include huge clouds of smoke emitted by the co…
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